Feature Request - Labs dedicated Console

[Coldfirex]

Howdy,

This is similar to my other feature request post385920.html. I was thinking of another way to accomplish this since support told me the Labs are tied to the backup jobs and if the B&R server reboots, assuming a Lab could ever run off a Proxy, then it would still go down.
What about if there was a minimal Console option (or enhanced option on Proxy) that had access to the jobs (via SQL)? Our SQL is stored on a dedicated SQL server from our B&R server. This way the labs could stay up if the main B&R server had to go down for maintenance?
Thanks

[PetrM]

Hi Alan,

Basically, it's not a matter of UI implementation but rather a serious change of the whole architecture. Anyway, we keep tracking similar requests. Just an idea: what about to spin up a spare server, for example on VM, from which you can orchestrate labs during maintenance of the main server?

Thanks!

[Coldfirex]

Can you expand on that? I am not following.

[Gostev]

He suggests using the dedicated backup server for labs.

[Coldfirex]

I apologize, but if labs can only be on the B&R server then what exactly are you suggesting I do with a spare server?

[veremin]

Petr's suggested to deploy additional VB&R server, create labs there and make it responsible for verification activities. Thanks!

[Coldfirex]

Would our existing license cover that use case?
I assume that it would need to have its own set of backup jobs to run off of?

[PetrM]

Basically, you can just add VMs to the application group from backups than can be imported on this dedicated server, imported backups do not consume license. Also, you can use the same license on the second server if the total amount of protected machines by both servers does not exceed a number of licensed instances. Therefore, your existing license will cover this use case if you don't backup additional workloads with this dedicated server.

Thanks!

[Coldfirex]

Well, that would at least provide us with some extra flexibility.
If we tried this out, after setup, the main B&R could go down for maintenance and the labs would stay up?
Would the external SQL server need to stay available for the labs to stay up as well?

[PetrM]

If labs are managed by the dedicated server, it won't have any dependencies on the main one.

If you're going to run database of the spare server on external SQL, then it must be available. On the other hand, I believe you can go with the default local SQL database as the only role of this dedicated server is to manage data labs.

Thanks!

[Coldfirex]

Well that would certainly make things more flexible for us!

What about potentially not having to have the labs run off a specific ESX host? It would be great if we could vmotion the labs to another host when needed.

[PetrM]

Hi Alan,

It's an interesting idea but we don't have a lot of requests for it, therefore it's difficult to assess the feasibility to implement this logic. As a workaround, you may consider this PS cmdlet to script virtual lab creation using ESXi name as an input parameter.

Thanks!