While I don't feel a burning desire to have a C-8 just for itself yet, I am a little nervous about my hub as a single point of failure in my home's behavior. I'd love to have a cold standby hub, and I could see ordering a C-8 to be that. That said, it seems silly to have the better hub paid for and under warranty sitting in a box.
If I bought a C-8 and migrated to it, would the C-7 then be usable as a cold standby? That is, could a backup from the C-8 be restored to the C-7 successfully and be back up and running in a few minutes?
The answer is yes and no. The yes part is that your database, apps, and devices and radio data could be restored only from a cloud C-8 backup using Hub Protect. Zigbee actuator devices (switches, dimmers, bulbs, etc.), while in the restored database, would most likely have to be reset and re-paired to the C-7, which would reconnect them to the correct device in the hub.
If I were to buy a C8 hub for use as a backup in case my C7 failed, could I still unbox and setup the C8 hub to ensure it works? Or would I run into conflicts because I temporarily added a second hub to my account, even though that hub wasn't going to be used yet?
You can add as many as you want to your account as long as you don't restore the same running configuration onto them. I have a second C7 which has been activated but not used for this purpose. If you want to sell it in the future you can get support to simply deregister it from your account.
Your best bet is to get another c8 then simply get hub protect. That way if something goes to hell hardware wise you can simply restore from the cloud including both z-wave and zigbee radios
Right, but I would run into issues with being able to swap in a spare C-8 in case of one going down. So I would still be in the same boat (mostly) of needing to re-pair all the Zigbee devices. Yes, migration to C-8 is easier, but right now I don't have a burning need to get the C-8 (other than to have the latest model). "Disaster" recovery was one thought. But I can't justify it right now if it's not going to be any better than C-7 with the yearly subscription when it comes to recovering from a hardware failure. It's all good. I'm sure I will upgrade to the C-8 at some point. Just won't be very soon unless something changes.
That seems counter to what @bravenel says a few posts up -- if time passes (with the ZigBee radio on) between the backup and the hub being shut down, a restore will need to re-pair ZigBee devices.
So if you backup a c8 to the cloud, and it backs up both radios, (c8 only) and the c8 dies and you get another c8, you can't restore the zigbee radio back to the new c8 replacement?
Count me confused as well...I guess what I thought I understood was that what the C8 provided in terms of enhancements of the backup feature, was that we would be able to restore a cloud backup and everything would just work, no need to re-pair any Zigbee devices (Z-Wave already worked on cloud backups for the C7).
Some of this discussion sounds like I may have misunderstood that.
So "full" restore (working Z-Wave & Zigbee, no re-pairing) only happens if you create the backup, promptly shut down the radios and then the hub (so no updates to counters can occur) and then do the restore to the new C8?
If you have a C8 die, and your last backup was a week ago, or I guess even just a day ago, then counters have updated so you'll need to re-pair Zigbee after restoring a backup.
If the source hub is still running, how long after a backup is the backup "fresh" and able to restore ZIgbee w/out re-pairing? A few minutes and counters have changed, an hour, or ?
So if you reset the zigbee radio in an existing hub prior to restore or have a new hub with a blank state vs an existing radio, you could restore the cloud backed up zigbee radio and it should work with actuators or am I still not getting it?
