Disaster Recovery - Restoring a K2 blackpearl environment

The following scenarios are addressed with restoration of a K2 blackpearl environment:

Scenarios
Cold Standby	A method of redundancy in which the secondary (i.e., backup) system is only called upon when the primary system fails. The system on cold standby receives scheduled data backups, but less frequently than a warm standby. Cold standby systems are used for non-critical applications or in cases where data is changed infrequently. The Disaster Recovery server names are the same as the server names currently in use.
Hot Standby	A method of redundancy in which the primary and secondary (i.e., backup) systems run simultaneously. The data is mirrored to the secondary server in real time so that both systems contain identical information. The Disaster Recovery server names are different to the server names currently in use.
Warm Standby	A method of redundancy in which the secondary (i.e., backup) system runs in the background of the primary system. Data is mirrored to the secondary server at regular intervals, which means that there are times when both servers do not contain the exact same data.

If loss of data is a concern, another option would be to perform SAN (system area network) mirroring, i.e. everything that is written to a SAN in the main site is replicated via the SAN link to the disaster recovery site. This is however an expensive option.

Restoring to a Cold Standby environment

Follow the steps below to restore to a cold standby:

Ensure that the Windows machine is in working order
Install the K2 Server and K2 Web Components
Apply service packs and/or updates
Restore the K2 blackpearl installation directory from backup
Restore databases from backup
Restore K2 servers and IIS servers from backup
Restore any other files for your K2 processes
Run the K2 blackpearl Configuration Manager to update the new license key
Start your K2 server
Test your K2 processes and data
Check the K2 Workspace and the server event log for any errors

Preparing a Hot or Warm Standby environment for restoration

It is important to note that preparation of the Hot or Warm Standby environment is required prior to the disaster occurring, as K2 stores configuration and licensing information within the K2 configuration databases.
Follow the steps below to prepare the environment for a Hot or Warm Standby restoration:

Install K2 blackpearl on the Disaster Recovery servers
Perform a full system backup of the K2 Disaster Recovery servers
Perform a backup of the data in the following two tables in the K2 databases:
- _Server table in K2Server database
- LicenseKeys table in HostServer database
Take the Hot or Warm Standby servers offline

Restoration of a Hot or Warm Standby environment

Follow the steps below to restore a Hot or Warm Standby environment:

Bring the Hot or Warm Standby environment online
Restore the K2 blackpearl ServiceBroker directory(K2 blackpearl\ServiceBroker) from backup
Restore any other custom assemblies that your processes may require to the machine
Restore the backed up databases
Restore the K2 Disaster Recovery Servers
Restore the data from the two tables backed up earlier
Update all references to the old machine such as ASPX pages, links to the Workspace, Worklist Web parts in SharePoint etc to point to the new machine name
Start the K2 blackpearl Service
Test your K2 processes and data
Check the K2 Workspace and the server event log for any errors

Restoring the K2 for Reporting Services Components

Follow the steps below to restore the K2 for Reporting Services Components:

Return the Windows machine to a working state
Install the K2 Reporting Components
Restore Reporting Services databases

If you need to reinstall the K2 Server Components, a new license key is required. The machine keys will probably change if the servers are on new hardware (except when using VM environments). You need to re-run the K2 blackpearl Configuration Manager to generate the new machine keys and then request new license keys.