Configuration file

Configuration file

Simple Failover has a configuration file - sfo.config.xml, where all the programs options and Server Sets are stored. The file is located in the same directory as the Simple Failover software, typically in the directory; C:\Program Files\Simple Failover. The sfo.config.xml file is automatically saved every 5 minutes (if any changes have been made if you edit the file directly for example with Notepad).

How to use
Simple Failover of course maintains the configuration file automatically based on the data entered in the GUI interface and through the HTTP API.
However, if you have a lot of server sets to configure or for example if you want to synchronize the Simple Failover with other systems on a regular basis, then you may want to update or create this configuration file yourself. This can be done using various types of scripting.
An XML schema file will be available from our web-site.

If you want to read the file you can open it in a web browser, in a text editor or you can use a more specialized XML editor like the freeware software CookTop 2.5 from http://xmlcooktop.com/ or XMLSpy from http://www.altova.com/.

With CookTop you can format the XML file with the option indent of attributes - Tidy, which will give you a nice and easily readable color-coded file. Here's a sample of a sfo.config.xml file:

Figure 1: Sample sfo.config.xml-file, that is color-coded by CookTop 2.5.

Notice: If a string includes special characters it must be HTML encoded - e.g. ampersand (&) and is written as &.
Follow the W3C special character guidelines to see other examples.

For a description of the elements and attributes making up the sfo.config.xml file, please see the <SimpleFailover> element in the XML Elements section, and follow the link to child elements from there.