Technical information

INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION GUIDE
58
The failover mechanism is based on a set of scripts:
sys-start.tcl: this script is run when VSI-FAX is launched. It sets up the initial state of the FoDC and
FoDC2 devices (i.e. the main device enabled and the failover device disabled).
sys-devfail.tcl: this scripts called whenever a device fails. It will disable the main device and enable the failover
one when the main device fails. Refer to configuring notifications on device failure
below to learn more.
crontab.lst and restorefodc.tcl: allows the devices configuration to be automatically re-initialized
after a certain amount of time after the main device has failed. Refer to Configuring the failover status re-
initialization below to learn more.
Submitting faxes with Fax on Demand failover support
The FoDC and FoDC2 devices belongs to a same class, the FODCClass. Therefore, you need to submit your faxes
to this class queue so that failover management works properly.
Examples:
To submit a single fax to this class queue enter the following command:
vfx –n 555555 –d FoDCClass fax.txt
To set the FODCClass as the default submission queue, enter:
vfxadmin class –u –d FoDCClass
See also
Refer to Command Reference in the Reference Addendum
documentation to learn more about these commands.
Enabling / Disabling the Fax on Demand failover
If you want to disable the failover feature, you need to modify an entry in the vsisrv.ini file. To do so, either edit it with
a text editor and locate the [DEVICE:FoDC] section. Under this section change the failover key to on or off
depending on if you want to enable or disable the feature:
[DEVICE:FoDC]
debug=off
failover=on
keep-files=off
dial-convert=off
request-timeout=300
...
Or you can use the vfxadmin config command to achieve the same result, by entering:
vfxadmin config -a -i FODC DEVICE failover off
Configuring the failover
Configuring the maximum number of attempts on the main device
By default, a device is disabled after three consecutive attempts. You can change this value to any number by editing
the vsisrv.ini file. Locate the [VFXSCHED] section and and change the MaxNoResps key value. Below is an example
to set this value to 5 instead of 3:
[VFXSCHED]
MaxNoRsps=5
You can also use the vfxadmin config command to achieve the same result, by entering:
vfxadmin config -a VFXSCHED MaxNoRsps 5
Important note
Make sure the value set for the MaxNoRsps key is compliant with your current retry strategy: you want more
total retries than the maximum number of fails on a device, or esle you faxes will fail before they have been
submitted to the failover device.