Just got my 2nd Hubitat Elevation which I plan to run as a hot spare. Any best practices in this area or recommendations for a better approach?
1 Like
You can search the forums for a few ideas, but a true "hot spare" isn't really possible, especially if both are C5s with internal radios. Zigbee devices remember the ID of the coordinator they are paired to, but the hub has all the necessary information in the database, so a re-pair of the device with a hub database restore will be sufficient to put it "back in place," but will still be necessary (there's little else you can do since the coordinator ID will change with the different hub, and the devices need to "know" that, but honestly that's pretty painless in the grand scheme of things). Z-Wave stores some information on the radio side, and the current hub backup tools cover only the hub database, not this. A re-pair will create a new node (far less painless).
An external stick would help in both cases: if it doesn't die, you could theoretically just move it with a backup to the new hub. To cover if that dies, third-party tools can do a backup of an external Z-Wave stick that you can restore to a new one, but I'm not sure how many people have tried or had luck with that.
2 Likes
You're right - won't be much delay to restore a back-up of the 1st Hub to the new Hub if the 1st fails. Then just do a repair of the networks. Thanks for putting me back on the right track.
To be extra clear, that's not what I meant for Z-Wave, which will be a huge pain unless you're using an external stick. 
That's about it for Zigbee, though.
1 Like
If you have Zwave devices, it would mean an exclude and pair for each Zwave device and fixing up every automation with those "newly" added devices. Not a simple task.
3 Likes
@bertabcd1234
Just so that I am clear about the process for restoring my automation to a spare Hubitat hub in the event of a hub faliure
I will need to
(1) Restore a working backup to the new hub,
(2) "Repair" the zigbee network,
(3) Exclude all z-wave devices (taking care to preserve all rules
in the process)
and finally,
(4) "Rediscover" all the z-wave devices (and restore the rules to working status)
Is that correct?
Did I cover it all?
Yes. Just to clarify one point -
"Repair" the zigbee network means to put each zigbee device into pairing mode and pair it with the new Hubitat.
and
"Rediscover" all the z-wave devices means exclude each z-wave device and then re-include it with the new Hubitat.
When considering this, it makes the recently announced (but not yet live) Hub Protection Service really attractive.
1 Like
@aaiyar (a bit off-topic) I am a bit confused about the Hubitat Protection Service. Do you know if it is available or not?
Announced, but not yet available. Based on the original announcement, I anticipate it will go live sometime this month.
1 Like
ok. thanx again. I 'll be watching....
1 Like
Same here.
