Backup of CTX4 licensing server

[zaccaz]

Hi there,

With backup purpose in minded, i installed CTX4 licensing server within a virtual server hosted by microsoft virtual server 2005, & the CTX4 licensing server is a stand alone sever without joining any domain.

Assume I copied the virtual server image to another site & bad things happend in my office, so at backup site I just need to turn on the virtual server, change the ipaddr or dns entry if required, in order to restore the ctx4 licensing server.

Is this a possible solution? Any other things I need to pay attention to?

Many thanks!

 

[tuliphead]

As far as I can see this should be a workable solution.

A few things to keep in mind:
1) You need to backup the license files on your primary license server (default path: c:\program files\citrix\licensing\myfiles)
2) Place the files from step 1 in the same directory on your backup MASL-server
3) remember that the servername has to be exactly the same on your backup server as on your primary server (the name *is* case sensitive). If you for some reason need to change the name of the MASL-server, you need to regenerate the license files
4) for administrative purpouses, it would be nice to have this machine as a member of your current domain, but this will be difficult with two servers that is named exactly like

I would suggest the following backup plan:
1) Install a clean virtual server (without MASL)
2) Make sure you have the license files from your primary MASL server backed up (for your convenience you can place a copy of those files on the virtual server)
3) If your MASL-server for any reason should explode or be unavailable, do the following:

a) Rename the server so it is named exactly the same as your primary offline MASL-server
b) Join the server to the domain
c) Install the MASL software and the administrative License Console on your virtual server
d) Copy the licensing files from your backup to c:\program files\citrix\licensing\myfiles\ folder
e) Make sure any DNS-entries that points to the MASL-server name is pointing to the correct IP-adress

Then you are up and running ... my guess is that the whole process is done in about 15 minutes.

Remember one more thing: Your Presentation Server farm wont notice that your licensing server is gone for a time period of 30 days (failover grace period). If your MASL server goes offline in a working production environment you will have about a month to get it online again.

Hope this post helped you out