OS X Yosemite Server failover

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Level 4

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OS X Yosemite Server failover

Hi all,

I have an OS X Server 10.10.5 running OD, Calendar, Contact and Time Machine services (perhaps more later). I can find plenty of documentation on how to set up an OD Replica but how do I configure another OS X server to be a complete clone/backup in case the first server goes down? The second server will be hosted in another state and I need it to take over the calendar and contact services primarily.

Is there any documentation or guides available on how to do this?

Any help appreciated.

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 12-Core 3.06, 64GB RAM, SSD & 14TB

Posted on Sep 1, 2015 6:16 PM

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Answer 1

jayv. Author

Level 4

1,303 points

Sep 1, 2015 6:17 PM in response to jayv.

For some reason there is no "edit" option on the post I made 10 seconds ago...

The server also runs Profile Manager.

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Answer 2

Sep 1, 2015 6:58 PM in response to jayv.

The initial post requires you to use the completely un-intuitive and completely asymmetrical Gear Icon above it to get access to the Edit option.

Clearly, Apple did not write the forum software itself.

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Answer 3

jayv. Author

Level 4

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Sep 1, 2015 8:27 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Ah good to know for next time. Indeed very un-Apple 😉

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Answer 4

Sep 2, 2015 3:07 AM in response to jayv.

Sadly Apple have killed off most of the (few) failover features they used to offer. OD is about all that specifically still has such capability.

You can probably setup a similar feature for Time Machine by having two Time Machine servers. Yosemite added the ability to add multiple Time Machine destinations so you simply add both Time Machine servers to each client as a destination.

For Contacts and Calendar (and presumably email) you need to look elsewhere. MS Exchange is an obvious possibility but most cloud based solutions including Google Gmail are also possibilities.

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Answer 5

jayv. Author

Level 4

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Sep 2, 2015 9:56 PM in response to John Lockwood

Wow! I had a feeling as I was unable to find any useful info out there. This makes OS X server suitable for home use only, no business would (should) run a server without a mirror that can take over. Anyone aware of any third party utilities that could help me accomplish creating a failover?

My biggest issue is all the clients enrolled through profile manager have settings pushed to their devices connecting them to the server. If the server fails how do I push new settings to all those clients, pointing them to the new server, if I can not access profile manager anymore?

Thanks for your help.

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Answer 6

Sep 3, 2015 1:55 AM in response to jayv.

If you have a backup then when the live Profile Manager fails you can restore the backup to a spare Mac mini. If you restore the backup then it will be identical to the original including IP addresses, names, certificates, etc. and the clients will not notice the difference.

Another approach that some people have have used is as follows.

Boot one Mac mini in Target Disk Mode
Connect it to a second Mac mini
Boot the second Mac mini as normal but ideally from Internet Recover or an external drive
Setup the hard disks of both Mac minis as a RAID1 mirror using Disk Utility
Install OS X and Server.app on to the RAID you have just created

Only one of the Mac minis will be actually 'running' the other acts as a glorified external hard disk, if the live Mac mini fails all you need to do is disconnect it and reboot the other Mac mini as normal instead of in Target Disk Mode.

Finally, for Profile Manager i.e. an MDM solution, there are lots of third-party products that can performa the same function and most of them have proper failover capabilities. For example Meraki Systems Manager.

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