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Potential Vera Refugee looking at HomeSeer

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    Potential Vera Refugee looking at HomeSeer

    Hello,

    First post here. I'm considering a HomeSeer system after dealing with Vera Control the past couple of years.

    I have one very important user requirement that Vera offers that I can't seem to determine if HomeSeer can also satisfy.

    My current setup has 2 Vera Plus controllers with the same ZWave configuration. One is the "primary" and the other is the "standby". Only one of these is running at any one time and each is independent of the other. The power supply to each of these is controlled by a third Vera Lite.

    What this lets me do is to shut down one controller and boot up the other controller remotely, via Vera Lite, in the event of a runaway controller crash. This has happened and I'm thankful I had this setup configured as I had to perform the switchover from another time zone. My ZWave network came back up and all was well until I could get back home for repairs.

    The result is that the standby controller fully recognizes and assumes control of my ZWave network after I shut down the primary controller. Works great. Wish I didn't have to have this redundancy, but when I needed it, it was effective.

    My question is: does HomeSeer systems offer this sort of ease of remote switchover to a standby type of controller in the event of failure of the primary controller without having to be physically present to do "stuff" to make the switchover successful? I don't mind investing into two independent systems to make this happen. Seems more robust that way, IMO.

    Thanks for any advice.

    ~Brian

    #2
    This is something that HS doesn't do, nor have I found an easy way of doing it. It would be a nice feature to have.

    That being said, I have never had a situation where I would need it with HS. Even through power outages (my stuff is UPS'd everywhere), and network outages, things have been really solid.

    I too, came from vera many moons ago. Tossed that green box as soon as I could.

    Comment


      #3
      interesting redundancy setup. I was a network/server administrator in a previous lifetime and definitely understand the complexity and difficulty in setting up a completely redundant system as you did.

      I would definitely look into doing something like this but haven't found it necessary. HomeSeer is very stable and haven't had it crash or 'run away' like you mention. Optimizing the zwave network, installing a UPS and using a reboot schedule for the controller has made my system very stable.

      Only issue I experienced was the zstick (zwave usb controller) becoming unresponsive while I was working on reboot and service scripts. I was doing many reboots while testing the script and the zstick slowed to a crawl. To fix this I I simply did a remote power cycle since the SEL is connected to a power pivot.

      My SEL is connected to a qwerky power pivot, which is a completely independent system and allows control/status through the wink app from anywhere in the world. Interesting thing is that I don't need to have a wink hub in order for the power pivot to work. Power pivots can be found for under $20 and include two switchable power outlets.

      Food for thought, as a completely redundant system might not be necessary with HomeSeer.

      Comment


        #4
        Not really necessary with Z-Net devices.
        Just backup your network, and if it bites the dust, you can just restore to another Z-Net.

        Comment


          #5
          another Vera user that came over to Hs3 over a year ago. hasn't crashed once. I do use UPS for power outages ...

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            #6
            I never needed it. I guess you should be able to do it with two PCs and two Z-Wave controllers. The second being a backup of the first and the two never being on at the same time.

            Regards
            Morten

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              #7
              Hi Brian,

              I had posted this on your other post.

              Effectively with Vera, you had one Computer (Vera) controlling failover between the other computers computers (more Vera).

              You could do exactly the same if you so desired, but it not exactly the same or I believe required...

              You were driven down that path due to other reliability and availability issues that I have not experienced with a PC, albeit Winter, Linux or Mac and/or Homeseer all-in-one platforms.

              So your assessment is correct as s system, Homeseer is more robust and the uptime should also reflect that. In addition as this operates on a full OS and not an embedded device and MiOS on to of OpenWRT, all the normal RDP, terminal services etc are available.
              -///

              You can do it but it is more complex, and in fact I kept Vera as a secondary controller as a redundant fall back for a short period when migrating back to Homeseer. But never required to the point I forgot it was running.

              That is not to state I did not have any issues and I have had to rebuild the z-wave network due to failure corruption of the z-wave device and not Homeseer and in that scenario, Vera had more robust backup/disaster recovery.

              Comment


                #8
                Thanks for all the replies. My apologies for the double post. This first one didn't show up here until just now and I thought it got instantly filtered out due to the word *refugee* in the subject.

                ~Brian

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