Specifications

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Disaster recovery
Many ePolicy Orchestrator users want to know how to set up ePolicy Orchestrator for a disaster
recovery scenario. There are a few options available depending on your tolerance of risk and budget
available for the additional hardware.
Many users think if the McAfee ePO server fails the McAfee Agents on the endpoints and the installed
point products stop working properly or malfunction in some way. On the contrary, all agents on your
endpoints simply try to contact the McAfee ePO server on their next communication interval and see
that the McAfee ePO server is not available. The agents simply try again at a later time. While the
McAfee ePO server is unavailable, any events that are generated are sent to ePolicy Orchestrator when
it becomes available again and the last policies pulled from ePolicy Orchestrator continue to be used
and enforced on the client.
The McAfee ePO server can be unavailable for extended periods of time in a disaster scenario with no
impact to your managed machines. The only negative impact is that you are unable to:
• Login to the McAfee ePO server to run reports
• Change polices or tasks since the McAfee ePO server GUI is unavailable
• See any new events reported by the clients
Contents
Configuring simple disaster recovery
Use server clusters for disaster recovery
Use cold and hot spares on one physical site
Use cold and hot spares on two physical sites
Configuring simple disaster recovery
The simplest method of disaster recovery is to rebuild the McAfee ePO server and restore the SQL
database that you have backed up for safe keeping. This is a good option if you are a small
environment (5,000 to 25,000 nodes) and if you have a reasonable tolerance for downtime.
This means if your server has a hardware failure to get your McAfee ePO server up and running again
you must:
Task
1
Repair the McAfee ePO server.
2
Reinstall the ePolicy Orchestrator software.
3
Patch the ePolicy Orchestrator software back to the previous levels.
4
Restore the SQL database.
Full restore procedures are covered in KnowledgeBase article KB66616.
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ePolicy Orchestrator
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4.0 and 4.5 Best Practices Guide
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