LeanSentry Business tier allows you to deploy monitoring for one or more of your servers in Offline mode, which prevents those servers from sending data and counting against your license limit.
The benefits of Offline mode are:
1. Prevent "inactive" servers from affecting aggregate data in your dashboard.
2. Deploy LeanSentry uniformly on all your servers, without worrying about active/inactive servers, while not having to count inactive servers against your paid server count.
Installing LeanSentry in "Offline" mode
You can enter a server into Offline mode from the beginning in one of the ways indicated below.
Both of these options allow you to start your server in Offline mode, and later bring it online via dashboard/API call when ready. You can also of bring the server back Offline the same way, as indicated in the next section.
1. Install LeanSentry as "Offline" by default (Local installer/cmdline deployment only).
To do this, use the "Offline=true" parameter when installing LeanSentry on the server in local mode. See Automating LeanSentry deployment for cmdline installation instructions. It is not currently possible to install LeanSentry in Offline mode via the interactive installer.
For example:
InstallProduct.exe 11533B52-131F-4E0A-A565-EB6468EF6FE7 /nowindow /writeerrors /cleanlogs "/p:ClientKey=YOUR_ENVIORNMENT_KEY;Name=SERVER_NAME;GenerateServiceAccount=true;AddSelf=true;Offline=true"
NOTE: When installing LeanSentry in offline mode, you may receive the following screen during the simple deployment wizard:
You can chose to bring your servers online to complete deployment normally, or to return to the setup once you are ready to bring servers online at a later time.
2. Add a server as "Offline" by default (Centralized/remote installer only).
When adding the server(s) to be monitored by your centralized LeanSentry Monitoring service instance via the Environment settings page, you can check the "Add servers in Offline mode" checkbox to add those servers in the Offline mode.
Moving the servers into - and out of - "Offline" mode
Regardless of whether you chose to initially monitor your server(s) in Offline mode, you can later bring the server online/set it back to Offline mode as follows:
1. Enable/disable the Offline mode via the Environment settings page.
Toggle each server's status to place it into Offline mode or bring it back online. Keep in mind that this change may take several minutes to take effect, during which this server may still count as active against your daily server count.
2. Enable/disable the Offline mode via an API call.
To place the server into Offline mode, or bring it back online, use the SetServerStatus API call as follows:
1. Make the GetServers API call to retrieve the server list, and identify the server you want to target.
2. Make the SetServerStatus(serverId, online) call to set the server offline (online=false) or bring it online (online=true).
If you have questions on how to use the API, please contact support.
Questions and Answers
Is the Offline mode available outside of the Business tier plans?
No.
What is the point of the Offline mode?
To simplify enterprise deployment by allowing LeanSentry to be "pre-deployed" on all your servers without exceeding plan license limits for inactive or standby servers.
What does LeanSentry do while in Offline mode?
The LeanSentry Monitoring service will be started, and ready to begin monitoring of your server(s) as soon as they are brought online. The service is also able to automatically update itself, and respond to other troubleshooting and system commands as needed to insure correct operation.
Can I use Offline mode to monitor a large number of servers "for free"?
No. While you can "install" LeanSentry on all your servers in Offline mode without counting them against your license limit, this prevents LeanSentry from capturing any useful monitoring data or diagnosing problems as they occur on your servers. As such, the usefulness of LeanSentry on these servers is severely limited.
LeanSentry's major value is being able to catch & diagnose issues when they occur, and proactively send you improvement opportunities. Therefore, having to manually enable/disable LeanSentry in order to diagnose problems you already know about eliminates the biggest value it provides to your team.
Can I use Offline mode for Azure cloud deployments?
Only if you are using programmatic deployment to deploy LeanSentry on your Azure instances. It is not currently possible to use Offline mode with our nuget installer for web/worker roles.
Related
You may also want to review the following content related to LeanSentry deployment options:
1. Automating LeanSentry deployment (for enterprise or cloud deployment).
2. Deciding whether to deploy LeanSentry in "local" or "centralized" configurations.
3. LeanSentry API.
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