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Question

Can LF provide a temporary license for disaster recovery testing?

Laserfiche
Updated August 22, 2016
asked on March 5, 2015 • Show version history

Our infrastructure team is performing a disaster recovery test this weekend. They have cloned all the Laserfiche servers (APP, Database, Web, QF). They will have same names as live boxes and same HWfingerprintID. 

I saw the steps in this question. Instead of having to deactivate the master license in live server, can we set up a temporary master license in license manager? Or is there any other way for us to do this testing without bringing live system down? Thanks.

https://answers.laserfiche.com/questions/65886/RIO-disaster-recovery

 

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Replies

replied on March 6, 2015

Apurva! That's so awesome that you're doing a disaster recovery test, I hope it  goes well. I'd love to know more about what you had to do to prepare for this and how you went about getting support (it's not always easy to convince people that such cautious measures are necessary). Let me know if you're open to discussing it and maybe we can run a feature on your organization for the ECM Blog laugh

 

Take care!

Renee

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replied on March 7, 2015 • Show version history

Hi Renee!

To my surprise, it worked quite smoothly! We had no issues from licensing perspective. We use lot of LF products and custom apps and all of them came up and worked. I just had to start LF services on servers. Our infrastructure team did a great job cloning all the environments and keeping names and HW fingerprint ID the same. So I didn't have to deactivate and reactivate master license. Sure I can discuss further when you want me to. smiley

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replied on March 11, 2015

Now that I think about it, this sounds like a great Solution Exchange post because the project was quite Laserfiche-specific. Would you be open to featuring this project there?

www.laserfiche.com/solutionexchange

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replied on April 23, 2015

Hey Apurva, are you still interested in featuring your disaster recovery test story on the Solution Exchange? Let me know!

 

Renee

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replied on March 9, 2015

It's all about the HWFP wink

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replied on March 5, 2015

You'll want to talk to your reseller or account manager for this one. 

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View 7 previous replies
replied on March 5, 2015

We had contacted them in the past but they were not sure if the system will just work without any changes, since all the servers are cloned or we will need a license.

Can someone answer if any additional steps are needed in the environment I described?

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replied on March 5, 2015

Assuming that you are simulating the recovery from a disaster that would require new servers be put in place you would not be able to simply turn them on, load the recovery image, and everything work properly.  This would be due to the hardware fingerprint that is associated to the LF license.  You would need to first use the activation tool to de-activate the license that was on the old server, then run it again to activate the recovery server.  The article below should outline these steps.

 

https://support.laserfiche.com/KB/1012301

replied on March 6, 2015 • Show version history

To use another instance of License Manager, you'll need to either use the existing license you have (by deactivating the old License Manager, then reactivating the new instance), or by receiving a test license from your Regional Manager and leaving the old instance up and running.  Let us know if you have any other questions!

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replied on March 7, 2015 • Show version history

To my surprise, it worked quite smoothly! We had no issues from licensing perspective. We use lot of LF products and custom apps and all of them came up and worked. Our infrastructure team did a great job cloning all the environments and keeping names and HW fingerprint ID the same. So I didn't have to deactivate and reactivate master license.

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replied on March 9, 2015

Glad to hear everything worked smoothly! It's great when the infrastructure all gets set up correctly. 

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replied on October 14, 2015

Apurva,

Hello, the Laserfiche Answers Question you referenced was from our VAR, I'm VERY curious how you were able to clone the server without it having a different hardware fingerprint? Furthermore, did you end up needing the test license from your regional manager to accomplish this? Thanks

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replied on October 14, 2015

We did not need a test license. I will have to check with infrastructure how they cloned the environment. I will let you know what I find out.

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replied on October 14, 2015 • Show version history

Here is the response from our infrastructure team.Hope that helps. - The server is a VM, so all of the hardware uniqueness is extracted out of Windows. Any VM cloning process would provide the same result because it is hardware agnostic. You can simply tell them to virtualize the server.

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replied on February 17, 2016

Does the cloned virtual server have the same exact name as the live production server? As it stands, we can not have the same name for the servers and have them both up to perform replication.

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replied on August 21, 2016

If you run a DR with two physical servers using a bare metal recovery strategy, then you will have a new HWFP. And you will not be able to activate your license or test you DR process unless you deactivate your live system(s). If you do have an actual crisis (flood, fire, theft, multi-drive crash, etc.), then you will not be able to bring up LF and activate (or deactivate LF from your crisis/crashed server). Your old license will still be active in the LF cloud DB. This presents a significant challenge to document the procedure, as far as LF is concerned. The bare metal recovery can take place and your replacement server can go online within hours, but you will have to contact LF or your re-seller to deactivate your old key and then, hopefully activate your DR server.  If this happens on a weekend, then you have two days of LF down time. For a manufacturing 24 X 7 environment, this can be traumatic. Trust me, I know from personal experience.

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replied on August 22, 2016

You only have to contact Laserfiche if you don't know your activation key and hardware fingerprint. If you do, you can just follow the instructions in this KB article.

A utility to show the hardware fingerprint is installed with the LF Server: showhwfp.exe.

The activation keys are listed on the support site.

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