Automation of Solarwinds HA failover

Dear All,

We are looking to automate the Solarwinds HA failover in DC - DR setup for our customer where we don't have the SQL availability group.

DC = Data Center - Primary Site

DR = Disaster Recovery - Secondary Site

By using scripts we will stop the database and Orion services in DC and start the same services in DR.

The challenge we are facing is how to automate the configuration wizard. we need to run the configuration wizard on DR pollers pointing to DR database.

I found below two articles with commands to run the configuration wizard but as per support representative(Case# 00428639) this commands can used used only for fresh installation and not for existing Orion server.

Please mention if any other option are available to automathe the HA failover process.

RaviKsagar.bgangadhar.k99kushalabdhijasharmadevendrabdefieguy

support.solarwinds.com/.../Install-Orion-products-in-unattended-or-silent-mode

support.solarwinds.com/.../Run-the-SolarWinds-Orion-Installer-in-the-silent-mode

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RaviK

If this requirement can be achieved will be really helpful to customers with even SQL Standard Editions for the Solarwinds environments and may not have to depend on very very expensive SQL Enterprise DB licenses. Not just the expensive licenses, but DBA expertise in setting up Availability Groups and Distributed Availability Groups.

To help understand the requirements better I am attaching a simplified diagram.

Go through the attachment to comprehend the requirements better.

We need to automate the running of Config Wizard in the last step to attach the DR Orion server to the new DB.

Even a silent command line option with the config file should help in creating a "poor man's HA"

sqlrockstar - Your valuable inputs, please

Solarwinds HA Dec 2019.pdf

dgsmith80

The only thing I could suggest is looking at this blog from our own KMSigma where he talks about automating the configuration wizard. Technically if you can condition the trigger to occur only in the event of an HA Failure and an SQL Failure then it could work, but don't forget that in reality, you will need to break the HA Pool before being able to run the configuration wizard on the DR Application Server. Which also means failback to the Primary will be cumbersome at best.

Automating the Configuration Wizard – Kevin's Ramblings

krishnamishra0786

Hello Ravik,

As per given attached PDF,

in last page, they suggested to run the config wizard to connect the replicate DB.

i would think, if we use the alias name (DBservername alias name\SolarWindsInstanceName), then we would not require to run config wizard. when storage will replicate in backend,

We will only change the alias record in DNS and point to Replicated DB server name. after that application will auto work.

thanks

jm_sysadmin

I have done this exactly, and fail over works. The alias is managed by a GSLB so I don't have to change it manually. the GSLB fails over when my port on the primary DC stops responding.

RaviK

Thanks Krishna - we will surely try this out

RaviK

Thanks jm_sysadmin, GSLB maybe a good idea to take away the manual pain of managing Alias DNS entries.