How to set up local server replication and redundancy
Small MSP environments often lack straightforward tools for full local server replication, forcing technicians to piece together complex solutions without clear best practices. This makes it difficult to design reliable redundancy setups or validate configurations left behind by previous engineers before presenting them to clients.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
How to set up local server replication and redundancy
- 1Setting up separate domain controllers per rackDid this help you?
- 2Using DFS for file serversDid this help you?
- 3Installing a new Windows Server VM and promoting it to a domain controllerDid this help you?
- 4Bypassing slow shared storage restores by attaching a temporary local disk to only the primary node, which leaves the database outside the availability group and breaks failover.Did this help you?
- 5Doing manual robocopiesDid this help you?
- 6Setting up normal replication with the server offlineDid this help you?
- 7Using alternative tools like SyncthingDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I've been looking for software or a solution that could replicate the entire server to the second local machine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what would be the best approach.”source ↗
“I'm dealing with a messy SQL Server cluster issue left behind by a terminated engineer and could really use a sanity check on my assessment before I present the final options to the management/client.”source ↗
“I've searched high and low and not found anything of use for this error and have been unsuccessful.”source ↗
“I've been doing manual robocopies every few days just to keep things fresh while I figure out a longer term solution, and I think I'm finding the same as you - DFS-R, while potentially a solution, may not be the greatest for this.”source ↗
Where this came up
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