Questions about adding a second server for failover

[Grunty]

We have a single XPe server in our farm.

I am planning on adding a second server with PRS4 on it and taking down the first to upgrade, bring that one up afterwards and keeping 2 servers running from then on.

Our current server has some shared folders used by Lotus notes.

I have already addeda test server with nothing ojn it other that the OS and Citrix, no apps or shared folders, yet they were available to be published .

My questions are:

1) Can I simply add a second server to the farm with all apps and shares duplicated, down the first, and all the clients will automatically fail over to the new server?

2) I assume I will have to make changes to the ICA client, can I do that remotely? maybe through some kind of policy or do I have to go into each one and add the new server or is there some way of adding a farm as a group, a bit like mulitple domain controllers?

thanks

 

[ascotta]

Pretty much load balancing works out of the box. However you need to make sure that each server is identical. Identical is ONLY needed if you plan to publish everything from all servers.

Providing they are attaching to a farm then you should not need to do anything to the client as Citrix will handle the least busy server and give that as the next connection.

[blue] A perspective from the other side!![/blue]

Cheers
Scott

 

[Grunty]

Thanks for the reply, helps me quite a bit. I can easily build another box and install all the apps. The only problem may be the version of some of the Lotus Notes files, but I think Notes' own replication facilty will handle that.

At the moment all clients are configured to only point to the original server name through a tcp/ip connection. Will I need to add the farm name? or will they just pick any available?

Thanks

 

[enigma99]

Grunty,
How are your clients connecting to that application?
Are they using the full PN, PN agent or Web interface?

If they are using web interface or PN Agent you can simply add the second server to your Web Interface XML browsing configuration.

If they are using the full PN client then your original server (the one already configured) will handle the browser request. As long as you are pointing to an "application set" versus a direct connection to that named server.

Hope that helps.