You are in:
- EDITORIAL CONTENT » Information Management
Achieving availability in your local and remote locations
By Chris Boorman, VP marketing EMEA, VERITAS Software
Today many companies have implemented clustering, storage management and replication technologies as a line of defence against downtime -- server and application failures, site outages, human error and other events that can threaten business operations and customer service levels. But these technologies can also be leveraged to reduce the costs and outage windows associated with unplanned and planned downtime events – providing a significant return on investment (ROI).
Backup, Recovery and Data Protection
Low cost and ubiquitous, most organisations have had backup in place since their record-keeping systems became electronic -- everyone is familiar with the saying, "Your recovery is only as good your last backup." An organisation must have a solution that ensures frequent, systematic backups to tape and/or disk. This is critical to ensuring that data can be recovered to a recent enough point to avoid an unacceptable interruption to business operations. The level of availability achieved by backup and recovery varies widely, depending on the target medium and the frequency of backup performed. Essentially every business should be backing up their data, and no one company should be without an off-site vaulting plan. Backup, vaulting and some of the more advanced technologies, such as data mirroring, can help businesses increase the availability of information.
Local Availability
At the primary data centre, a level of redundancy can be added to prevent downtime related to a localised interruption in business operations, such as a server, application failure or general maintenance. Building upon backup and recovery, the next layer of availability is needed for businesses looking to achieve their recovery-point objectives (RPO) and recovery-time objectives (RTO).
The combination of virtualisation and clustering, automates the process of bringing up storage, servers and applications, easily re-directing clients to a secondary site in the event of an interruption to business. Replicating and clustering technologies provides the highest level of availability for critical applications by ensuring computing power is applied where it is needed. A comprehensive clustering solution will monitor the health of applications and physical hardware, then; automatically take corrective action should either fail. If applications are placed under cluster control the entire process of bringing up an application and data is simplified by automatically bringing up the storage and application, then redirecting users to the correct network address. This reduces the chance for human error in the event of an outage and provides an automated approach to storage, server and application availability.
This level of high availability can also be achieved at a secondary site by implementing the same solution in a remote location.
Remote Availability
For many businesses in highly regulated industries or where downtime is intolerable, it is absolutely necessary to have more than a single site. This second site, often referred to as a ‘hot site’, might be a recovery facility the business shares with a handful of others for purposes of recovering from a disaster, or it might be a second data centre that performs separate functions from the primary site on a daily basis. In the event of an interruption in business operations, the secondary site doubles as a site-wide failover facility; critical systems from the primary data centre may be automatically or manually switched over to the second site without suffering an interruption in business operations, consistent with the recovery-point and recovery-time objectives of that business.
The enabling technologies in this layer are replication and clustering software, the same technologies used to achieve local availability. In a remote location, these technologies allow for a cluster of storage, servers and applications at a primary site to be relayed to a secondary cluster of storage, servers and applications at a secondary site without interruption or loss of data. With one click, an entire data centre full of operations can be moved over to a second data centre or recovery site – without requiring an exact replica of hardware at the secondary site. Combined, replication and clustering ensure the data arrives at the secondary site, and that applications are up and running to process that information without loss. Businesses looking for ways to make the most of their current investment in hardware and infrastructure should look for solutions that do not require identical hardware on either end of the cluster, but rather allow the user to select the combination of hardware and applications that best suit their business objectives and budget needs.
The Benefits
The clustering, replication and storage management tools that make up an effective high availability/disaster recovery solution for many companies can generously contribute to ROI when leveraged appropriately.
These tools automate procedures, reduce administrative costs, increase efficiency and minimise the possibility of error. Many highly automated routine procedures can be initiated remotely by administrators or executed automatically on a scheduled basis.
In today’s environment, unforeseen events and site outages will happen. However, clustering, replication and storage management technologies can be used to ensure the availability of data and applications, minimise the impact of failures on the business and ultimately align IT with business operations while significantly increasing the company’s ROI.
