Failover using Business Continuity Service (BCS)

The Wave IP offers a wide variety of communications workflow applications which may be business-critical. For some customers, failover may need to occur if the contact center is not operational. For others, an IVR failure might be the business critical application. For this reason, BCS leaves failover as a conscious decision on the part of the system administrator rather than choosing automated failover conditions.

Failover is accomplished with two steps:

  1. Activate BCS Failover on the Secondary Wave IP.
    1. Log in to Global Administrator on the Secondary Wave IP (see Login to Wave IP Global Administrator).
       
    2. Click on General Settings.

       
    3. Click on the Business Continuity tab.

       
    4. Click the Activate this Secondary Server button.
      NOTE: The Secondary Wave IP will send a command to the Primary telling it to shutdown all services. Depending on the severity of the failure, this command may not be received by the Primary. This is why a manual step to disconnect the Primary is critical. Otherwise, a partially failed system might cause problems with the operation of the secondary.

       
  2. Disconnect the Primary Wave IP from the  network. The Primary needs to be removed from the network to prevent further issues. This can be accomplished a number of ways:
    1. Disconnect power to the Wave IP. This can be done by flipping the black toggle switch on the power supply or by unplugging the Wave IP. (This could be done remotely with a network enabled power strip or UPS that allows remote power off.)
    2. Disconnect network connectivity. This can be done by unplugging the network cable from the Wave IP. It can also be done remotely by disabling the switch port in a managed switch. 

The Secondary Wave will become active very quickly and begin handling all services (exact amount of time depends on number of stations and number of applications in use. 90 seconds should be the top end.) Expected behavior is as follows:

  1. Active calls will drop. 
  2. Phones should switch over to the secondary server. If there are any configuration differences between the settings of the two Wave IPs, then the affected phones will reboot.
  3. ViewPoint will disconnect, restart, and log back on to the secondary server.
  4. ViewPoint Mobile will update all information from the secondary server.
  5. All applications will become active and handle calls from that moment.