Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 7.4 HA and DR Solutions Guide for Enterprise Vault - Windows

Last Published:
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation (7.4)
Platform: Windows
  1. Introducing SFW HA for EV
    1.  
      About clustering solutions with InfoScale products
    2.  
      About high availability
    3.  
      How a high availability solution works
    4. How VCS monitors storage components
      1.  
        Shared storage - if you use NetApp filers
      2.  
        Shared storage - if you use SFW to manage cluster dynamic disk groups
      3.  
        Shared storage - if you use Windows LDM to manage shared disks
      4.  
        Non-shared storage - if you use SFW to manage dynamic disk groups
      5.  
        Non-shared storage - if you use Windows LDM to manage local disks
      6.  
        Non-shared storage - if you use VMware storage
    5.  
      About replication
    6.  
      About disaster recovery
    7.  
      What you can do with a disaster recovery solution
    8.  
      Typical disaster recovery configuration
  2. Configuring high availability for Enterprise Vault with InfoScale Enterprise
    1. Reviewing the HA configuration
      1. Active-Passive configuration
        1.  
          Sample Active-Passive configuration
        2.  
          IP addresses for sample Active-Passive configuration
    2. Reviewing the disaster recovery configuration
      1.  
        Sample disaster recovery configuration
      2.  
        IP addresses for disaster recovery configuration
      3.  
        Supported disaster recovery configurations for service group dependencies
    3.  
      High availability (HA) configuration (New Server)
    4.  
      Following the HA workflow in the Solutions Configuration Center
    5. Disaster recovery configuration
      1.  
        DR configuration tasks: Primary site
      2.  
        DR configuration tasks: Secondary site
    6. Notes and recommendations for cluster and application configuration
      1.  
        IPv6 support
    7.  
      Configuring the storage hardware and network
    8. Configuring cluster disk groups and volumes for Enterprise Vault
      1.  
        About cluster disk groups and volumes
      2.  
        Prerequisites for configuring cluster disk groups and volumes
      3.  
        Considerations for a fast failover configuration
      4.  
        Considerations for disks and volumes for campus clusters
      5.  
        Considerations for volumes for a Volume Replicator configuration
      6.  
        Sample disk group and volume configuration
      7.  
        Viewing the available disk storage
      8.  
        Creating a cluster disk group
      9.  
        Creating Volumes
      10.  
        About managing disk groups and volumes
      11.  
        Importing a disk group and mounting a volume
      12.  
        Unmounting a volume and deporting a disk group
      13.  
        Adding drive letters to mount the volumes
      14.  
        Deporting the cluster disk group
    9.  
      Configuring the cluster
    10.  
      Adding a node to an existing VCS cluster
    11.  
      Verifying your primary site configuration
    12.  
      Guidelines for installing InfoScale Enterprise and configuring the cluster on the secondary site
    13.  
      Setting up your replication environment
    14.  
      Setting up security for Volume Replicator
    15.  
      Assigning user privileges (secure clusters only)
    16.  
      Configuring disaster recovery with the DR wizard
    17.  
      Cloning the storage on the secondary site using the DR wizard (Volume Replicator replication option)
    18.  
      Installing and configuring Enterprise Vault on the secondary site
    19.  
      Configuring Volume Replicator replication and global clustering
    20.  
      Configuring global clustering only
    21.  
      Setting service group dependencies for disaster recovery
    22.  
      Verifying the disaster recovery configuration
    23.  
      Establishing secure communication within the global cluster (optional)
    24.  
      Adding multiple DR sites (optional)
    25.  
      Recovery procedures for service group dependencies
  3. Using the Solutions Configuration Center
    1.  
      About the Solutions Configuration Center
    2.  
      Starting the Solutions Configuration Center
    3.  
      Options in the Solutions Configuration Center
    4.  
      About launching wizards from the Solutions Configuration Center
    5.  
      Remote and local access to Solutions wizards
    6.  
      Solutions wizards and logs
    7.  
      Workflows in the Solutions Configuration Center
  4. Installing and configuring Enterprise Vault for failover
    1.  
      Installing Enterprise Vault
    2. Configuring the Enterprise Vault service group
      1.  
        Before you configure an EV service group
      2.  
        Creating an EV service group
      3.  
        Enabling fast failover for disk groups (optional)
    3.  
      Configuring Enterprise Vault Server in a cluster environment
    4.  
      Setting service group dependencies for high availability
    5.  
      Verifying the Enterprise Vault cluster configuration
    6.  
      Setting up Enterprise Vault
    7.  
      Considerations when modifying an EV service group
  5. Appendix A. Using Veritas AppProtect for vSphere
    1.  
      About Just In Time Availability
    2.  
      Prerequisites
    3.  
      Setting up a plan
    4.  
      Deleting a plan
    5.  
      Managing a plan
    6.  
      Viewing the history tab
    7.  
      Limitations of Just In Time Availability
    8.  
      Getting started with Just In Time Availability
    9.  
      Supported operating systems and configurations
    10.  
      Viewing the properties
    11.  
      Log files
    12.  
      Plan states
    13.  
      Troubleshooting Just In Time Availability

About Just In Time Availability

The Just In Time Availability solution provides increased availability to the applications on a single node InfoScale Availability cluster in VMware virtual environments.

Using the Just In Time Availability solution, you can create plans for:

  • Planned Maintenance

  • Unplanned Recovery

Planned Maintenance

In the event of planned maintenance, the Just In Time Availability solution enables you to clone a virtual machine, bring it online, and fail over the applications running on that virtual machine to the clone on the same ESX host. After the maintenance procedure is complete, you can fail back the applications to the original virtual machine. Besides failover and failback operations, you can delete a virtual machine clone, view the properties of the virtual machine and its clone, and so on.

Unplanned Recovery

When an application encounters an unexpected or unplanned failure on the original or primary virtual machine on the primary ESX host, the Just In Time Availability solution enables you to recover the application and bring it online using the unplanned recovery feature.

With Unplanned Recovery Policies, the Just In Time Availability solution enables you to set up recovery policies to mitigate unplanned failures that are encountered by an application. Just In Time Availability solution provides the following recovery policies; you may select one or all the recovery policies as per your need:

Unplanned Recovery Policies

Description

Restart Application

Just In Time Availability (JIT) solution attempts to restart the service group (SG), and bring the application online on the original virtual machine on primary ESX.

Maximum three retry attempts are permitted under this policy.

Note:

If all the three attempts fail, application continues to remain in faulted state or continues with the next policy as selected while creating a plan.

Restart virtual machine (VM)

Just In Time Availability (JIT) solution performs the following subsequent tasks:

  • take the service group offline

  • shut down the virtual machine

  • power on the virtual machine

  • bring the service group online on the original virtual machine on primary ESX

You are provided with Last attempt will be VM reset option to reset the virtual machine.

By default, this checkbox is selected and the default retry attempt value is one. If you retain the default settings, then VM reset operation is performed on the virtual machine at the first attempt itself.

Maximum three retry attempts are permitted for this operation.

If you deselect the checkbox, then the virtual machine reset (VM Reset) operation is not performed.

Restart VM on target ESX

Using this policy, you can recover the faulted application on the virtual machine.

In this policy, the original virtual machine is unregistered from the primary ESX; registered on the target ESX; and the faulted application is brought online on the target ESX.

Restore VM on target ESX

Using this policy, you can recover the faulted application on the virtual machine using a boot disk backup copy of the original virtual machine.

In this policy, the original virtual machine is unregistered from the ESX and the boot disk backup copy of the original virtual machine is registered on target ESX. The faulted application is then brought online on the virtual machine.

Unplanned Failback

The Unplanned Failback operation lets you fail back the application from the boot disk backup copy of virtual machine on the target ESX to the original virtual machine on primary ESX.

If you have selected either Restart VM on target ESX or Restore VM on target ESX or both the recovery policies, you can perform the Unplanned Failback operation.

On the Plans tab, in the plans table list, right-click the virtual machine and click Unplanned Failback.

Note:

Unplanned Failback operation operation is disabled and not available for the plans and the virtual machines which have Restart Application and Restart VM policies as the only selected options.

Based on the selected recovery policy for a plan, Just In Time Availability (JIT) solution performs the necessary operations in the sequential order.

For example, if you have selected Restart Application and Restart VM as the recovery policy, then in the event of unplanned application failure, first it performs tasks for Restart Application policy and if that fails, it moves to the next policy.

You may select one or all the recovery policies based on your requirement.

Table: Tasks performed for each Unplanned Recovery policy lists the sequence of tasks that are performed for each Unplanned Recovery policy.

Table: Tasks performed for each Unplanned Recovery policy

Unplanned Recovery Policy

Tasks Performed

Restart Application

  • Make an attempt to restart the application.

Restart virtual machine (VM)

  1. Takes the service group(s) offline

  2. Shuts down the virtual machine

  3. Power on the virtual machine

  4. Brings the service group(s) online

Restart VM on target ESX

  1. Takes the service group(s) offline

  2. Shuts down the original virtual machine

  3. Detaches the data disks from the original virtual machine

  4. Unregisters the virtual machine from the primary ESX

  5. Registers the original virtual machine on target ESX

  6. Attaches the data disks back to the virtual machine

  7. Power on the virtual machine

  8. Brings the service group(s) online

Restore VM on target ESX

  1. Takes the service group(s) offline

  2. Shuts down the virtual machine

  3. Detaches the data disks from the virtual machine

  4. Unregisters the original virtual machine from the target ESX

  5. Registers the boot disk backup copy of the original virtual machine to the target ESX

  6. Attaches the data disks back to the virtual machine

  7. Power on the virtual machine

  8. Brings the service group(s) online

Unplanned Failback

  1. Takes the service group(s) offline

  2. Shuts down the virtual machine

  3. Detaches the data disks from the virtual machine

  4. Unregisters the virtual machine from the target ESX

  5. Registers the virtual machine using the original boot disk backup copy to the primary ESX

  6. Attaches the data disks to the virtual machine

  7. Power on the virtual machine on primary ESX

  8. Brings the service group(s) online on the virtual machine

Scheduler Settings

While creating a plan for unplanned recovery, with Scheduler Settings, you can set up a schedule for taking a back up of boot disk of all the virtual machines that are a part of the plan.

To use the Just In Time Availability solution, go to vSphere Web Client > Home view > Veritas AppProtect.

See Setting up a plan.