sanovi_whitepapers_19-4-11

white paperA Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness. Sanovi's DR Management Suite ( Sanovi DRM™ ) is the leading industry DR management software for open system applications and database. Sanovi's DR software enables application level DR monitoring and lowers cost of operations and recovery. With its patented software architecture, Sanovi DRM provides easy-to-deploy, highly scalable software supporting all major enterprise database, operating systems, third party replication software and storage solutions. Sanovi DRM offers the following key features to ensure application recovery readiness: Ø Dashboard view of application recovery metric including Recovery Point, Recovery Time and DR solution health Ø Alerts on deviations that may impact application recovery Ø Out-of-box automation for DR Drills and application failover Ø Compliance and deviation reports on application recovery readiness Ø Recovery dependency mapping of applications, storage, database, servers, and replication relationships These features enable IT organizations to effectively manage the recovery SLAs and provide recovery assurance to the business. With its application aware framework, Sanovi software significantly reduces the operational costs associated with the management of disaster recovery assets and increases the productivity of the operations staff. This paper discusses the various challenges in deploying and managing disaster recovery solutions and specifies how Sanovi DRM addresses them to provide a comprehensive approach to meet application recovery SLA's. There are several influences that go into the making of an application's DR solution: Ø Disaster recovery goals (RPO & RTO) dictate the choice of technology and the solution Ø The availability of skilled IT staff to deploy and the operational cost required to maintain the recovery IT process that track and manage change & configuration management, IT wide monitoring & event management. Ø We discuss each of the above aspects in detail: ©2011 Sanovi 1 The resources and skill set required for database . When an outage hits the production site. the redo log is then applied to get the secondary database to the same state as the production database. When an outage make the production system unavailable. This method is recommended only when synchronous replication is in force. replication setup and everyday operation must be available Production database performance has to be factored in if synchronous replication is in use since every I/O write operations has to be acknowledged from the secondary site before the application can proceed. All volumes that contain the data files and redo logs are replicated. The second method is to use SRDF to replicate the complete database. 1. 3. the recovery is staged by applying all archive logs to the stand-by database and then the SRDF replicated redo log is applied to the stand-by database. 2. a mirror of the archive log mirror is mounted on the secondary database and applied. After all archive logs are applied. Which of the above is the preferred solution depends on the business goals.Sanovi Whitepaper .A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness Goals Dictate Technology and Solution Choices To help us understand the thought process that goes into deciding a DR solution. The third method is to use SRDF to replicate both the online redo log volume and the archive log volume. There are at least three methods an IT recovery solution can be crafted depending on the goals of the organization. ©2011 Sanovi 2 . Ø Ø Database level corruption propagation can be delayed if log application is delayed on the secondary site. When an outage makes the production database unavailable. The first method is to use the Oracle replication mechanism to replicate the archive log from the primary to the stand-by database. we take an example of an Oracle database that is replicated across two sites using EMC SRDF Storage Array replication technology (SRDF) to meet the Recovery Point Objective of five minutes. the secondary Oracle database is started in recovery mode so that the redo log can be played back to make the secondary database transactional consistent. The volume containing the current redo log is replicated to the secondary site using SRDF. Some of the points to consider are: Ø Ø Network link cost is higher when synchronous replication is a requirement. requiring companies to invest in skills and training. Using a DR aware workflow engine. Regular Test Drills for verification of DR readiness Testing is the best way to build confidence that DR solutions work as designed. The real test comes with time – will it still be able to meet the business' RPO and RTO goals? Given six months or more the number of end-users will have changed. configuration changes have occurred. a replication console to monitor how well the replication is doing and a network management console to monitor the network.g. the replication scheme (e. disaster recovery management is complex. This results in the customer deploying pre-tested. It is this complexity coupled with manual execution of the run-book steps that results in higher operator errors and higher cost of ownership in implementing application level disaster recovery. Sanovi DRM captures the process and steps required to interface with application (e. It interfaces with the various layers of the solution and reports on real-time Recovery Point. the server. third party replication products. network traffic is different.Sanovi Whitepaper . companies test less often then should with good reason. Disaster Recovery Monitoring for a Changing Environment IT recovery solutions are generally designed to handle and meet the RPO and RTO goals of the business at the time that they are established.A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness Technology Expertise and Operational Costs Operationally. Is the disaster recovery solution keeping up? The IT department needs several heads to tell. What about a console for the holistic recovery solution? Sanovi offers a single console view of your IT recovery health. Oracle). In reality. Recovery work flows such as DR Drills and Failover tend to be complex with many steps and several dependencies. Sanovi DRM supports all major applications.g. SRDF). Sanovi's application service modules monitor and alert/propagate configuration and environment changes in the primary site to the secondary site so that failover to the secondary site works senselessly. OS environments and storage platforms for the enterprise. DR Drill often results in ©2011 Sanovi 3 . standard and best-practices solutions every time. Recovery Time and replication Datalag from the application's point of view. an application console to monitor each application. storage and network to automate deployment and operation of the recovery solution. Automated DR Workflows . Pre-packaged workflows can be customized to meet the end user requirements. recovery operations that include failover and fallback and DR Drills that include switchover and switchback. The Sanovi solution also ensures that data protection will resume smoothly after fallback by re-enabling forward direction replication. Sanovi provides the capability to automate the fallback process. ensuring smooth flow of control from secondary database to repaired primary. Sanovi DRM supports Recovery Dependency Mapping that can ensure that failover tasks are executed in the correct order and end-to-end application failover is completed in the optimal time. Sanovi DR Drill module provides the capability to automate DR Drill workflows easily and execute regular DR drills smoothly. most replication solutions by themselves don't address application failover tasks such as re-routing network connections and bring up of dependent applications. on failover the secondary database is recovered and is ready to accept user requests. failover application recovery and DR Drills. transparent fallback to primary systems when they become available is equally important. Tracking and Reporting Application DR Readiness It is important that organizations keep track of the execution and event history of DR operations.A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness operational disruption of production schedules. DR Solution signatures are packaged with out-of-box best industry practice workflows for normal DR operations.Failover and Drills Sanovi DRM supports and recognizes DR solution signatures for standard enterprise applications. However. As a part of comprehensive support for DR life-cycle. reliably and automatically. Sanovi DRM recognizes that DR solution goes through a life-cycle that includes normal operations. This help in the following: Ø Ø Improving recovery time windows Meet auditory compliance needs ©2011 Sanovi 4 . additional costs and labour intensive coordination efforts between multiple groups.Sanovi Whitepaper . managing dependencies and execution of steps can be automated using the DR Drill module. Sanovi DRM uses a DR aware engine to orchestrate and execute workflows on appropriate components. The process of coordination. A common case is. Sanovi's DR Drill modules enable non-intrusive testing using snapshots or backup copies of data on the DR enabling risk-free recovery testing and validation. for recovery readiness. As an example.A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness Ø Ø Ø Increase operational efficiency Provide visibility and transparency into the DR operations Executive level reporting to continue to have the management buy-in Sanovi reporting module tracks detailed execution history of various DR events including: Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø RPO deviations from business configured value Replication throughput and outages with trends Summary and step-wise break down of DR Drills Summary and step-wise break down of failover operations Application summary report on its DR readiness including RPO snapshot. How Sanovi Software Works Sanovi DRM software is a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Framework providing a webbased console and easy-to-use wizard-based setup and configuration. the Internet banking application also needs to failover to the secondary site. Sanovi software and its services modules are installed in customer environment. By configuring the application dependency information into the software. The ability to represent these kinds of application interdependency is supported in Sanovi using a hierarchy of recovery group relationships and stored in its recovery dependency database.Sanovi Whitepaper . At this time. It understands DR solution signatures based on the best industry practices and provides pre-built monitoring. the internet banking application is dependent on the core banking application to be available and running. If the core banking application on the primary fails. Representing Application Interdependency It is often that the business depends on more than one IT application to be available. status of the last DR Drill and number of critical events that have occurred on this application This information is presented through graphical and tabular reports that can be exported into other commonly useful formats. storage and network environments. Sanovi software overlays all the dependent components on top of the existing DR systems and monitors. replication products and server. validation and automation steps for recovery and testing enterprise applications. 2. The software interoperates with leading vendor applications. Sanovi ©2011 Sanovi 5 . High level steps and the resulting capabilities are elaborated below: 1. then the secondary site core banking application will take over. both physical and virtual. The reports module offers graphical and tabular information on compliance and deviation of application to various recovery metric. Its pre-built Recovery Automation Library enables fast deployment. This enables error free and predictable disaster recovery of critical applications. is a comprehensive family of enterprise-class DR management software solution for validating. For more information visit www. server.com ©2011 Sanovi 6 .Sanovi Whitepaper . RPO and Datalag in real time for each application. About Sanovi Sanovi helps organizations across the globe pro actively manage Disaster Recovery (DR) environments and ensure business managers that applications can be recovered in compliance with service level agreements. 3. monitoring. providing assured recovery and increased operational efficiency.sanovi. The operational steps required for a successful failover. Sanovi's DR aware recovery workflow manager is used to automate DR Drills and Failover steps. 4. With Sanovi. For new DR deployment. Customers are able to reduce risk. are encapsulated in Sanovi software and presented to the user in easily accessible templates. storage and network technologies. tame complexity and drive down costs while increasing their application's recovery readiness.A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness software modules monitor and validate the recovery readiness and report DR solution health. such as splitting the SRDF pair on the secondary and starting Oracle in recovery mode. customers gain visibility into complex replication environments. After automation of the recovery steps. Detailed analysis of workflow execution with the time taken and comparison with previous runs is provided. 5. With deep integration to leading application. Sanovi DRM. its pre-built DR Solution Signatures based on best practice provide fully automated DR capability out-of-box for all supported applications. Summary Sanovi DRM is a leading software solution that provides real time visibility. Sanovi automates advanced disaster recovery operations. control and automation of disaster recovery processes and ensures readiness of all applications at the DR site. The software keeps track of the execution history and provides them through reporting modules. testing and automating recovery. these procedures can be executed through a click of a button. replication.