Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Dynamics Application Server Failover for patching or DR

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by SJohnsonBPA

150

Dynamics Community Folks,

I'm on a project where we are looking at the initial architecture design, and I ran into another question.

Today, the implementation team mentioned that with Full Server installs using NLB we cannot "failover" the application to another server node in the event of patching or other hardware failure. It makes sense that NLB supports hardware failure, but if the main server node running Dynamics CRM dies, the other server nodes participating in NLB do not recover from the main node being offline? Does this sounds right to anyone out there? I'm concerned about our DR solution if NLB doesn't have the ability to completely recover from the host node in the NLB cluster going offline.

Any thoughts or experiences are most welcome for this topic.

Thanks, Shauna

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (4)

Answers (1)

Suggested answer

Gus Gonzalez 27,113 on at

Like (0)

Report

Shauna,

All CRM servers within the organization will read from a unique and shared CRM Database. This means that if a server goes down, the other server will be able to cover while you recover that one node.

I am not sure why your IT Departments thinks otherwise.

Good Luck!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
RuneDaub 3,795 on at

Like (0)

Report

The only part of CRM that is unable to be secured by fail over is the Async service.

In CRM 4.0 this could have impact if you logged on using IFD and the async was down... Cant remember if its the same in CRM 2011. Gus?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Gus Gonzalez 27,113 on at

Like (0)

Report

It works the same way in CRM 2011 but I'm not sure if this is a catastrophic event though. If you have a cluster of CRM Servers you can always be serviced by another server in the cluster.

Remember that the CRM Async Service takes over the task of executing system jobs amongst other things. If Server 1's Async Service is down, when Server 1 submits a System job to the CRM Database, Server 2's Async Service can pick it up and execute it.

I have done this "Front End - Back End" server configuration I came up with many times at customers that wanted performance but didn't have the money to invest on clustering technology.

What you do is, you place one CRM Server (The "Front End") to be accessed by all users within your organization. This server will have the Async Service stopped and disabled. Then you add two (or more) "back-end" servers that do not receive any user connections but only dedicate to process system jobs submitted by the front end server.

This model performs very well. :)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
SJohnsonBPA 150 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks Gus, and Rune too;

This really makes sense to me and reminded to go back to the documentation that describes the front end and back end server in the architecture. This is exactly what we need to research further, but these answers go a long way to explain it. Thanks again, I am extremely grateful for the responses. This is an excellent forum!

-Shauna

Was this reply helpful? Yes No

Community site session details

Dynamics Application Server Failover for patching or DR

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Responsible AI policies

Neeraj Kumar – Community Spotlight

Congratulations to the November Top 10 Community Leaders!

Leaderboard > 🔒一 Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Featured topics

Product updates

Community site session details

Dynamics Application Server Failover for patching or DR

Helpful resources

Quick Links

Responsible AI policies

Neeraj Kumar – Community Spotlight

Congratulations to the November Top 10 Community Leaders!

Subscribe to this forum!

Select categories

Leaderboard > 🔒一 Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Featured topics

Product updates