WinPE Module, Second TOEM Server for Failover, Replication, SMB
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Hello,
I've been using TOEM for a little over a year and had a few setbacks here and there with endpoints communicating from time to time, had to rebuild once also. It's been working very well for the most part. Yesterday, I upgraded us to the latest version and have a few questions that maybe you can clear up.
Failover:
My primary TOEM server is at an ip address ending in .39 so I built a second TOEM server at .40 to be used as a failover in case anything happens to the main .39 server. It's up and running, it's accessible and looks great. While it may seem obvious for some, I just want to clarify what the settings should be for a failover type situation. The same credentials seem to work for both .39 and .40 so it doesn't appear that they are two separate servers. The endpoints are all listed there just like the primary also. My few questions where this is concerned are...
Do I leave the com server at .40:8888 and just change it 39 should there be any issue with the primary server?
Or would that even matter since theres a unique ID that all the endpoints use to communicate and check in which would probably be different on the second server right?
Sorry to complicate this just want to be sure... should I have the upload interface and the com server address the same on both the primary and failover or should they be different on both? I'm not using it for load balancing or anything unless you recommend it this way. My primary reason for building the second one was for failover I suppose.
Should I have a primary com server cluster with both com servers and then a secondary com server cluster with just the failover com server? Should they be set to active active or active passive?
Replication:
During one of the previous upgrades, I interpreted the wording in the documentation to indicate that I now need to have a SMB share since I have more than one server. I added an external hard drive and titled it EMS_SMB. It's connected to one of my administrative systems and shared on the network. So now I have toems_local storage on the c drive on the primary server, toems_local storage on the c drive of the failover server and the external hard drive which is a network share. We have 4 or 5 images that we captured and use regularly. They took a while but finally replicated after that upgrade (two upgrades ago) now its really taking its time replicating so I just want to make sure of what these settings should be...
Do I need to use the external hard drive or is there a better way to do this? If so, should I be utilizing the direct to smb function that I see in the settings?
WinPE
Lastly, I was able to successfully create an image and deploy it using the new Windows Imaging Environment and the new "Super ISO" that works well... a couple of questions though..
I will have to recapture the other images that I previously made with the linux environment correct? If I want to use the new Windows 11 UEFI/Legacy friendly WIE method?
When trying to follow the documentation for building the WIE, that all went fine but I couldn't figure out how to take advantage of the new feature where you can deploy an image to a computer directly through the TOEM web gui using the Toec Client on that machine. I adjusted the image settings for a particular endpoint, then I saw a section for a WinPE module so figured I had to create this module. I went to modules and created a default WinPE module but wasn't sure exactly which file to upload... I uploaded the Super ISO but when trying to deploy the image via toec to an endpoint in the webgui, it said files were missing. Do I need to upload different files? Perhaps other boot files that were creating during the WIE build?
Sorry for all these questions at once. Answer only when time allows. I appreciate all of the hard work you put into this product.
Thanks!
- Novice TOEM user.
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Failover:
A lot of this is just personal preference in how you want it setup. Each server should be it's own com server with their own ip's upload interfaces etc. If you have two servers setup, I would just set them both to active. You might as well use
the resources from both. You should use a single cluster with both com servers in them. No need for another cluster. When using multiple servers they both share the same database, that's why everything is already there. If your first server goes down,
your second will also stop working since the database is not accessible. You would either need to move the database to it's own server, or replicate the data for the db from server 1 to server 2 with some type of task to be 100% redundant. Your images / files
will already be on both servers.Replication:
Again this is up to you. Typically I use a seperate centralized SMB server, if you don't have that, what you are doing is fine. You could also just share the local storage location from 1 of the servers and that can double as both the local and SMB storage.WinPE
Yes you will need to recapture. To use the new feature you need to create a winpe module and upload the boot.sdi and winpe10x64.wim files that were created from wie_build. Then assign that winpe module to the computer to from computers->imaging settings. -
Thank you for taking the time to reply to these. I took your suggestion about simply sharing the local storage from one of the two servers. So I have the two local storage locations as well as the SMB which is the toems local storage from the original server shared as an SMB. I'll get rid of the external hard drive that I was using as the SMB originally. I also deleted the secondary com server cluster and have both the primary toems server and the second toems server in the one main cluster, both as active and all features checked.
I take regular images of the entire primary server and the secondary server so included in that image should be the database. So as long as I maintain this backup process, I should always be able to restore communication with my endpoints should anything happen correct?
Since I have the two seperate servers utilizing the same database both turned on, I suppose this acts as like a load balancer since we have double the resources then? If I could figure out a way to replicate the database to both like you said, whats the benefit... just easier more automatic failover vs restoring the original server from my backup image if it goes down?
I went ahead and uploaded those files and the WinPE module as well as the new deploy through toec feature worked very well. Off the top of your head, any reason we can upload images just fine when booting from the flash drive into the new windows imaging environment but when we try to deploy an image we get an error determining minimum hard drive size? Thanks again!
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@anx98049 said in WinPE Module, Second TOEM Server for Failover, Replication, SMB:
I take regular images of the entire primary server and the secondary server so included in that image should be the database. So as long as I maintain this backup process, I should always be able to restore communication with my endpoints should anything happen correct?
Yes.
Since I have the two seperate servers utilizing the same database both turned on, I suppose this acts as like a load balancer since we have double the resources then? If I could figure out a way to replicate the database to both like you said, whats the benefit... just easier more automatic failover vs restoring the original server from my backup image if it goes down?
Yes. The only advantage is the either server could be powered off and everything would still function.
Last issue is difficult to say. In your deploy options for the image profile do you have it set to standard?
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@theopenem_admin The Default LIE Block has it set to dynamic but the WIE says standard. Should I adjust this setting? Thank you for your time.
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It would be on the actual image. I think you are talking about in settings.
Images->view->image profiles->deploy options -
@theopenem_admin Ahh I see. Ok which should they be for my WinPE images? One image has it set to dynamic, one has standard. I may have changed one during troubleshooting. Thanks.
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Standard is the most reliable, you just need to select the correct windows partition below when standard is selected.