If you take a look and various HA (high availibility) or cluster projects going on for Webservers and Databases, you can learn a lot about how such things work in other software projects.
Since a full backup system (hot spare) should automatically take over within less than a second, there should be at least 2 show servers up and running at the same time and both send their output to all DPs (kind of a redunant showserver cluster). The DP should ignore all packets coming from showserver 2 unless it doesn't get any data from showserver 1 any more. All clients in the show (Hog3s, IPCs, Hog3PC) should connect to all Showservers and send the same data to both of them. The showservers sync each other by exchanging all "events" they got from the clients in case something got lost.
In the case of a crash of showserver 1 (running on a hog3 for example), I could still control the show from the desk of the other processes are still running and I have had a second showserver active in the network. Or I could pull the network cable of the hog3 and go on with the show on another desk without any interruption in the show or dmx.
The second problem is the backup DP: We'd need to DPs doing exactly the same. If one crashes, just plug the dmx cables into the backup DP. This should not be configured at the desk but at the DP itself (i.e. I do not want to duplicate my patch on another 4 outputs)
For the clients: There should be a slave mode like a MSC slave, but without all the MIDI stuff. We have ethernet here and my backup console might not be standing right next to the main console for whatever reason and I do not see any reason why there should be an additional cable be needed. Maybe just add a few network MIDI-Ports? So a console can send on "Network MIDI-Port 1" and another one listens on "Network MIDI-Port 1" in MSC slave mode?
And although it doesn't really fit in here: The virtual DPs in Hog3PC should be available in the network just like every other DP, especially for these full backup strategies. So it should be possible to have the backup showserver running on a laptop and have superwidgets (or any mixture of usb-dmx-widgets and DP2000s) as backup DPs...
just doing some brainstorming ;) hope it helps! Jan
If you take a look and various HA (high availibility) or cluster projects going on for Webservers and Databases, you can learn a lot about how such things work in other software projects.
Since a full backup system (hot spare) should automatically take over within less than a second, there should be at least 2 show servers up and running at the same time and both send their output to all DPs (kind of a redunant showserver cluster). The DP should ignore all packets coming from showserver 2 unless it doesn't get any data from showserver 1 any more. All clients in the show (Hog3s, IPCs, Hog3PC) should connect to all Showservers and send the same data to both of them. The showservers sync each other by exchanging all "events" they got from the clients in case something got lost.
In the case of a crash of showserver 1 (running on a hog3 for example), I could still control the show from the desk of the other processes are still running and I have had a second showserver active in the network. Or I could pull the network cable of the hog3 and go on with the show on another desk without any interruption in the show or dmx.
The second problem is the backup DP: We'd need to DPs doing exactly the same. If one crashes, just plug the dmx cables into the backup DP. This should not be configured at the desk but at the DP itself (i.e. I do not want to duplicate my patch on another 4 outputs)
For the clients: There should be a slave mode like a MSC slave, but without all the MIDI stuff. We have ethernet here and my backup console might not be standing right next to the main console for whatever reason and I do not see any reason why there should be an additional cable be needed. Maybe just add a few network MIDI-Ports? So a console can send on "Network MIDI-Port 1" and another one listens on "Network MIDI-Port 1" in MSC slave mode?
And although it doesn't really fit in here: The virtual DPs in Hog3PC should be available in the network just like every other DP, especially for these full backup strategies. So it should be possible to have the backup showserver running on a laptop and have superwidgets (or any mixture of usb-dmx-widgets and DP2000s) as backup DPs...
just doing some brainstorming ;) hope it helps! Jan
