We host our SimpleHelp server service on-premises and regularly experience temporary broadband downtime (2 - 4 hours).
Can redundancy be added to our service by installing a SimpleHelp server at a different location and registering all our remote access services with both servers? If this isn’t possible are there any alternative solutions?
Thanks.
I would seriously consider using a server hosted somewhere more reliable. Just find a reliable company to host a virtual Windows (or Linux) server and move the installation there. Since we did that, it got a lot more reliable and faster too. It’s also far less complex that having failovers etc.
However, if you are mainly supporting people within your own company on site, having a local server makes sense, but I don’t think you’re in that situation - a broadband outage shouldn’t bother you then.
We use DigitalOcean for our server, depending on the size of server you go with it can be $5 or $10/month. A $10/month server handles our 1500+ machines that are connected. No downtime. As long as you are ok with the server being Linux it’s the way to go.
Here’s a referral code that gives you $100 to spend in your first 60 days…
Hope that helps.
Yes, you can register the same machine to multiple servers. I personally do this for a couple of machine I work on.
It is a manual process I believe unless you purchase the Enterprise version for HA.
But yes, any version can do it by hand. The business version gives you access to the migrate option to do more then one at a time.
@Darrell_Swafford
Darrell,
would you be so kind and explain how to register the same machine on multiple servers?
Just add another server in the configuration. Either through the tech console or the remote access service. @Marco_Ferrante
@Darrell_Swafford
That’s what I did. Thanks.
Now on the alternate server, how do you add all the machines that are on the original server?
All the settings are client based. Not server. So you have to change each clients configuration.
Standard license has to be done manually on each machine.
If you have a business or enterprise license you can do this in bulk.
If you have an enterprise license you can setup an HA server under the ADMIN Server Settings.
For a business license use the migrate function.
@Darrell_Swafford
So for one client I went ahead and added a new set of addresses to reach the alternate server.
the alternate server does not show the client, it has no registered machines.
Make sure your ports and firewall settings are correct along with the address.
If they are it will work.
Make sure you are using the right protocol. UDP vs http vs https.
it works. I had to stop the server to update it to 5.3.4 that has basically just been published, and low and behold, some clients I had configured with addresses for both servers populated the new server. Excellent.
Thanks for all your help.
My company has its own SH server for supporting our client base, publicly on the Internet with persistent connections to many client locations. We have a standard license. One of my clients would like to install SH for his fairly large LAN. I see the benefit of him using a business license for some of its features. Do you know of any issue with a client PC registering with both two servers with two different license types?
I am not aware of any issues. I currently have 1 pc registered to 2 servers. 1 business and 1 standard. The access service doesn’t seem to care.
