Configuring Disaster Recovery Fail-over for PXE Servers

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

This article is the Procedure for Disaster Recovery failover options are available for use with remote PXE Servers

Environment

GSS 3.x

Resolution

Configuration Settings

Ensure PXE Boot images are synchronized between the Production (PROD) and Disaster Recovery (DR). Refer to KB article ID KB 179554 "Migrating PXE files from one Ghost Solution Suite (GSS) to another" for an outline on how to synchronize servers.

This step will ensure that all boot image configurations are the same across both GSS Servers and will allow the PXE Server to come back on-line against the DR GSS without having to download boot images upon fail-over.

Prepare Disaster Recovery files

• Create at least 1 PXE Server attached to the DR server.
• Copy the RPC.INI file from this installation to a storage location on the DR Server as RPC.INI.DR.

Disaster Recovery Failover Process

• Stop PXE Config Helper Server services;
• Backup and rename PXE.INI to PXE.INI.PROD¹;
• Delete the existing PXE.INI;
• Backup RPC.INI to RPC.INI.PROD¹;
• Delete the existing RPC.INI;
• Copy the RPC.INI.DR² file to the PXE server as RPC.INI from the DR Server;
  • If there is an existing PXE.INI.DR file on the PXE Server rename it to PXE.INI
• Start PXE Config Helper Server service;

PXE Server will check into the Disaster Recovery Deployment Server and download the DR PXE Server configuration (which has been synchronized as per above).  A new PXE.INI file will be downloaded from the DR Server.

Production Restoration Process

• Stop PXE Config Helper Server services;
• Backup and rename PXE.INI to PXE.INI.DR;
• Delete the existing PXE.INI
• Backup and rename RPC.INI to RPC.INI.DR;
• Delete the existing RPC.INI
• Create RPC.INI from the backup file RPC.INI.PROD;
• Create PXE.INI from the backup file PXE.INI.PROD;
• Start PXE Config Helper service;

PXE Server will check into the Production Deployment Server and will have registered with the same details as prior to the fail-over.

IMPORTANT:

It is critical that you backup the PXE.INI file on the PXE Server to ensure that duplicate GUID registration entries for the same host within the PXEManager.ini are not generated.  Having duplicate PXE Server GUID registrations against the same host/IP address has been known to cause the PXE Manager service to fail.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Replace any existing backup file with the latest version.
2. If there is an existing RPC.INI.DR file on the PXE Server from a previous fail-over operation then this file should be used.