Did a search for this .. and didnt turn up any results...

Ill start out by saying... I read the TOS where it says you can use your license on one physical server or VPS.

But I ran into an issue the other day, where my server was down for about 8 hours for some hardware problems.


Would it be within the rules to install the same Centova license onto a second server (which would be a mirror of the main server, updated daily) - which would serve as a fail safe should the main server go down? Should for some reason the current ip that my DNS point to go down, it would change over to the backup server, thus keeping my streams active.

This technically would not be using the license twice - since only one would be running at a time - but wanted to get thoughts on it?

Do any of you have other fail safes in place for if your main server goes down?

Thanks!

Todd

nope you cant do that from what I understand.

And Im curious as to what it is you understand that I didnt state above??

Has someone made specific clarification of the rules to you? Care to share them?


I look at it from the perspective - we could (or hire Centova to) migrate us over to another server should we decide to change servers for whatever reason.  In theory this could be looked at like this.  But having the migration all set up and ready to go should the current server fail.  Then when the original IP address come back on line - it swaps back to the main server.


If my question was one regarding load sharing, and having 2 servers running simultaneously - then I could understand a custom solution and the need to purchase two licenses.

And in all honesty - if a fail safe cannot be set up in some manner to satisfy the Centova rules, Id probably opt to set up a 2nd server running simultaneously for load sharing, with each being a fail safe for each other.  If I do have to purchase a 2nd license - this would seem the best route.

While I appreciate your informative replies... I might refer you to your reply in this thread:

http://forums.centova.com/index.php?topic=2826.msg8284#msg8284

Im not even sure why you are replying to my message when you obviously have nothing to offer factual or first hand - just as you called a user out in response to your question.

Centova has already responded to my issue - with plenty of options.

Thanks again!

Im not sure trolling other peoples threads is permitted here when you have nothing factual to post.

Id hope the moderators take the time to delete your jibberish.

Non-factual information is not helpful to anyone in a support forum.

Please keep pointless threads out of posts from people who are serious about their businesses.

It is not permitted (nor technically possible -- our licensing system won't allow it) to simultaneously *use* the same license one more than one server at a time.

But if you can set it up such that your second server remains dormant until you need it, and then just move the license over at that time before bringing the new machine up, that's essentially the poor-man's equivalent of running a 2-node cluster with something like DRBD+pacemaker for high availability, which is is perfectly reasonable.  And if it's setup right, your license is never in use on more than one machine at a time, so it's well within the licensing terms.

Actually implementing this is up to you (eg: it's not something we would provide technical support for, or assistance with) but the general idea would look something like:
1. Install CC on the secondary machine
2. Stop CC (/etc/init.d/centovacast stop) and remove its init scripts (eg on Debian: update-rc.d -f centovacast remove) so that it doesn't automatically start up at boot.
3. Temporarily disable its cron job by moving /etc/cron.d/centovacast to a temporary location.
4. Setup some kind of filesystem and database synchronization between the "live" server and the secondary machine.

And then to perform a failover, do the following on the secondary machine:

1. Reissue the license in your client area at centova.com.
2. Perform any updates in the database or on the filesystem -- eg: if you're replicating your filesystem/database, you'll need to change all the IP addresses in the DB and in the *.conf files on disk to match those on the slave machine.  If you're only replicating your media, you'll need to perform a media library update to pull in any media that was added since the last time the secondary was active.  The replication and updates of this nature are the hard parts, really, and are left as an exercise for the reader.
3. Move /etc/cron.d/centovacast back into place
4. Start CC (/etc/init.d/centovacast start)

The one thing you'll want to be careful of, however, is failing over too frequently.  If you exceed a certain threshold, our licensing system will detect that you're reissuing your license back and forth between the same two servers over and over, and it'll assume you're trying to "beat the system" to use the same license on two servers.  If that happens, further reissuances will be blocked for a period of time, which would be a bad thing to happen during a server outage.

In a nutshell, though, as long as no two servers are live at the same time with the same license, you can move around your licenses as needed and not run afoul of the licensing terms.

Thanks so much for your public reply, Steve.

This is exactly the point I was getting at, while I was being trolled.

My goal was to have it installed onto a second server, not running simultaneously, but at the ready for a switch over should there be a potential long down period.

Your knowledge is much appreciated!

Thanks for the help!

Todd