Standby site

[mmoniz]

Currently have a Wing FTP server setup at one site and due to recent storms we have preemptively shutdown servers which has take down FTP. We have another site we would like to setup as a hot/cold backup site for hosting FTP. Reviewing the Wing Gateway product, it doesn't appear to be quite meant for multi-site redundancy. Checking forum posts here, it looks like a solution would be to setup a identical 2nd Wing FTP Server at the other site and use a separate product (DFS, secondcopy, robocopy, etc) to sync data and ftproot folders over. Is that correct and nothing currently built-in to sync multiple Wing FTP servers (config and/or ftproot)?
If we were to sync/copy over the data folder, is there a special process we need to follow to "reload" the config on copy? For example, should we make sure the Wing FTP service are shutdown before copying over the data folder or would just a restart of the service after the copy be enough?
Or is there another process we should look into? We would likely just update public DNS in the case of a failover.
Would we need to purchase another Wing FTP Server license for the 2nd site, even if it's a cold standby and shutdown most of the time?
Thanks!

[FTP]

1. You may check on the option "Failover server" for the standby server, and you need to copy/sync the data (or ftproot) folder manually.
2. You need to stop the WingFTP service first before copying the data folder.
3. You should purchase two licenses because the standby server is also running.

[mmoniz]

Thank you, when you mention "Failover server" option, the only reference I find about that option is related to the Wing Gateway product. But if I understand that correctly, would need to run two Gateways, 1 per site. Since if one site goes down, it would take down the Wing Gateway with it also. And then I guess each Gateway would need to reference both FTP servers (one active, one standby)?
Thanks!

[FTP]

No, you just need to run one gateway. And the option "Failover server" can be set under WingFTP's side (Server > Settings > Gateway Manager):



If enable the option "Failover server", the current WingFTP server will play as a failover server, it will standby until the master FTP server fails or goes down.

[mmoniz]

Sorry, I'm confused about only needing to having one gateway. If the site that is hosting the Gateway server goes down, what would take its place? I understand that if the main FTP server server goes down, it will switch FTP servers. But if a site does down, it's going to take down both the Gateway and main FTP server, leaving the failover FTP server and no Gateway. So just having one gateway doesn't sound like it would work unless it's isolated from the sites (which is not the case here)?

[FTP]

OK, so you should install WingFTP and Wing Gateway separately in the different server machines. If you want to consider the failover of Wing Gateway, maybe you need to put hardware (or software) load balancer in the front of Wing Gateway, like an F5 Load Balancer.

[mmoniz]

Thank you, perhaps they will consider datacenter or cloud hosting in the future. But sounds like our process would be:
1. Purchase and setup a 2nd Wing FTP at the 2nd office location.
2. Setup a scheduled system, perhaps nightly when FTP is not in use, that will:
a. Shutdown Wing FTP services on both servers
b. Copy over the Data folder from primary FTP server (source-of-truth) to the secondary. Like a robocopy script.
c. Start Wing FTP services
3. Setup a system to somewhat keep ftproot files in sync between the two servers (no need to shutdown FTP for that).
4. Write up a procedure on manual fail-over:
a. If possible, do a final copy over from primary to secondary.
b. Change public DNS records to point to secondary site.
5. Write up a procedure on manual fail-back:
a. Shutdown Wing FTP services, copy back Data folder, start Wing FTP services. If settings have changed only.
b. Chan[/list][/list]ge public DNS records to point back to primary site.
Thanks!

[FTP]

Yes, you can follow the above process. One thing needs to note is, WingFTP and Wing Gateway need to be installed in the same local network.