ADSP Failover test process

[FrankB]

Hello,

After discovering that some undocumented firewall changes had left ADSP sensors unable to speak with my standby appliance only after a primary appliance failed, I'm wondering if there isn't a way for me to force the system to failover so we can test that the procedure works without requiring someone to pull cables/disable switchports. These additional constraints are due to the appliance in question being remote to my location, and not having control over the switchports they are connected to. From working with Extreme PS in the past, I know that if you have root access you can stop the processes gracefully, but without having that root access I'm coming up empty with regards to how to cause the failover to occur. Is there something I'm not thinking of?

[FrankB]

Rob: On a heavily loaded appliance, it has been my experience that absent something that significantly lengthens the boot process like a fsck, the appliance will finish rebooting before all sensors make their way over to the standby. It definitely takes longer than the period a services restart takes. It's for that reason I want to bring the application itself down and leave it down.

[RobertZ]

You can restart all the services or reboot appliance via the ADSPadmin console when you login via ssh

[FrankB]

Where do I lodge a feature request? 

[ckelly]

Frank, sounds like you're referring to the AnyBoot command...which as you said, does require root access to actually stop and start the various AirDefense processes.

Short of this, and not being able to control the switchports remotely, I can't think of any other way to force a failover condition - unless you wanted to halt the system. Halting would physically require someone powering up the server again though if it's a hardware server.

If it's a VM though, you COULD halt it and then bring it back up remotely when ready.

That's all I can think of.