Create!Form and Create!Print Manual Failover?

We run XE and Create!Form on a single production box and a test box. We want to write a script to replicate the configuration from prod to test in the event we need to fail over due to problems. Bottomline was no help at all (as is usually the case). I plan to write some registry hack scripts and duplicate the configuration as much as reasonable, but differences between test and prod will inevitably creep in. Has anyone on the forums done anything similar? Clustering will not be an option, since we still intend on using the test box to test of course. The problems with the Create! suite will more than likely come about due to software configuration or functionality weaknesses and will have little to no cause in hardware or OS failures. In short, what have been your collective experiences with turn-key propagation of Create! configurations from one installation to another?

Russell Jungwirth
Technical Analyst/CNC
Trek Bicycles
XE/iSeries/Create!

Russell: most of our clients (we are a Create!form partner) have both a development and DR/Test server in place. In our experience, there are really three main areas of synchronization - the files and folders (i.e., project/script files and CommonProject/CommonFormProject, device and font files), the software versions and set up, and the devices (printers). Using the second server as a test box for new releases would certainly introduce discrepancies - most sites would handle this (for DR purposes) by having a back up of the main Create!form folder and the registry to load back to the DR box. For the queues, I am going to check as I believe one of our clients wrote a VB program to replicate queues between servers (they have over 230). For the programs, it might be as simple as re-installing the software as this is not very time consuming.

If the two servers are in synch, probably the easiest way to switch over is to set the DR server name and IP address to be the same as the failed server .. this keeps links to queues in Xe the same (i.e., the OUTQ specs on the iSeries).

I hope this helps - let me know if I can provide other info. I can also put you in touch with some of our customers if that would help - ones with similar characteristics (iSeries, XE).

What version of Create!form are you using?