20190625: Voalte Platform 3.6 automated server failover functionality.

Purpose.

The purpose of this bulletin is to inform all hospital leaders and staff responsible for the support of Voalte Platform^™ about an issue discovered in Voalte Platform Server^™ 3.6. 

Background.

In Voalte Platform Server 3.6, an issue was discovered that reduces the effectiveness of the automated server failover functionality. All Voalte Platform customers running a version of Voalte Platform Server 3.6 may be affected. 

Impact.

Under specific timing circumstances, when the connection to one of the two high availability (HA) Voalte Platform Server nodes is lost, the database service migration may not complete as expected, and components of the audit subsystem stop writing directly to the database. This leads to system instability over time. 

When the audit subsystem stops working, a Voalte Systems Engineer is required to perform a manual service restoration. This procedure cannot be performed live and will require all users to log back into the system after a brief downtime. 

Improvements were made in Voalte Platform Server 3.7, specifically around the failover timing and logic, that prevent this rare issue from occurring.

Next steps.

Voalte strongly recommends upgrading to the latest GA version of Voalte Platform. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to begin planning an upgrade.