Backing Up the Compliance Server

Topic Last Modified: 2011-07-13

Although a Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Group Chat allows only one Compliance Server to be active in a pool at a time, you can install multiple standby Compliance Servers and follow a set of manual failure recovery steps to transfer the processing of compliance events from one Compliance Server to another. If you are installing multiple Compliance Servers, all Compliance Servers, whether active or standby, should have a Startup Type value of Manual in the Services snap-in. This is important because the Lync Server 2010, Group Chat pool cannot tolerate more than one active Compliance Server, and a service should not be started if it is not currently configured as the active service.

You can identify the active Compliance Server in the Group Chat Server database by using the value of the serverType column in the tbServerIdentity table. If the Compliance Server, identified by its FQDN in the serverAddress column, has an associated value of 4 in the serverType column, it is the active server.

The following procedures describe how to install a standby Compliance Server, how to switch to a standby Compliance Server following an outage, and how to revert to the original Compliance Server. To perform the steps in the procedures, you must have read/write permission on both the Group Chat database and the compliance database.

• To install a standby Compliance Server
  You can install as many standby Compliance Servers as your business requires.

  1. Disable the primary (active) Compliance Server by following the steps described in Disabling the Active Compliance Server.

  2. Install a standby Compliance Server using the same installation options that were selected for the primary Compliance Server.

     After you perform this step, the standby Compliance Server is the active server.

  3. Re-enable the primary Compliance Server by following the steps described in Changing the Active Compliance Server.

• To switch to a standby Compliance Server following an outage
  In the event of an outage, you may have to migrate compliance processing to a standby Compliance Server.

  1. Disable the failed Compliance Server by following the steps described in Disabling the Active Compliance Server, starting with the cleanup process described in step 4.

     Important

     Be sure to follow the instructions for creating a backup of the compliance data tables because you will need that information when you revert to the primary Compliance Server.

  2. Make the standby Compliance Server active by following the steps described in Changing the Active Compliance Server.

• To revert to the primary Compliance Server
  After recovering from the failure, revert compliance processing back to the primary Compliance Server.

  1. Disable the standby Compliance Server by following the steps described in Disabling the Active Compliance Server.

  2. Make the primary Compliance Server active by following the steps described in Changing the Active Compliance Server.

     Important

     Be sure to restore the compliance data tables in the database using the backup file that you created before you disabled the original primary Compliance Server.