Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business 4 Continuance

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1 A Hot Topic in the NHS: Evolution of the Data Centre Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business 4 Continuance Cisco has a long-standing commitment to the NHS and, over many years, has been able to offer advice and guidance on how technology can deliver clinical, financial and operational benefits. With the recent publication of the Cisco Network Architecture Blueprint for the NHS (C-NAB 1 ), Cisco demonstrated the relevance of technology to the business of the NHS. C-NAB advocates that by first establishing a robust, scalable and secure foundation, NHS organisations can confidently deploy advanced technology solutions to support business outcomes and efficiency gains. One of the most rapidly evolving areas of ICT infrastructure is the Data Centre. The demands on the traditional Computer Room environment are ever increasing and customers are adopting a roadmap approach that includes the introduction of virtualisation, automation and ultimately cloud. Cisco s Data Centre 3.0 strategy supports this evolution at a pace that works for each customer s requirements. In response to these developments in an often complex environment, Cisco is providing a series of brief guidance documents. This document is number 4 of 6 and focuses on the closely linked topics of disaster recovery and business continuance in the Data Centres of a healthcare organisation. 1 Cisco Network Architecture Blueprint for NHS Trusts 1

2 The critical importance of Data Centre resilience to support business continuity As ICT investments made by NHS organisations are aligned closer to business and clinical need, the dependence on a highly available infrastructure and compute environment becomes ever more important. Convergence of voice and video amongst other applications dictate the need for a scalable, hierarchical network design, but in the Data Centre the need to support business continuity is perhaps even more critical. In the NHS today, reliable access to data is a key requirement for the delivery of patient care and operational efficiency and the Data Centre is the very heart of that need.

3 A Hot Topic in the NHS: Evolution of the Data Centre 4. Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance Any business continuance strategy should include elements such as disaster avoidance, disaster recovery and a contingency plan. These elements are all essential in enabling organisations to apportion funds appropriately and according to the size and nature of the business. Clearly, in the NHS this includes assessing the level of critical dependency for clinical and priority business services on the Data Centre environment itself. Responding to this need, many NHS organisations provide operations across two or more Data Centres providing scalability and resilience between them, whilst within the Data Centres themselves every effort is made to avoid single points of failure. In each case good design, implementation and management are key. The business goal is therefore to achieve redundancy, high availability, scalability and security not just of the data itself but also the infrastructure which hosts data and provides access to it. How do Cisco s Data Centre solutions support business continuity? As described above, today s NHS organisations must maintain application availability anytime, anywhere and with optimal response times. One common approach is to establish geographically dispersed Data Centres supporting effective disaster avoidance and disaster recovery mechanisms that inherently increase the availability of applications. Geographic dispersion also enables better application response through improved facility placement and allows flexible mobility of workloads across Data Centres to avoid demand hotspots. At the same time, advances in server virtualisation and clustering technology are helping NHS organisations achieve increased business agility, resiliency and efficiency within the Data Centre. However, as these technologies are deployed across split-site or multiple Data Centres other challenges emerge such as ensuring the mobility and policy aspects of the virtualised environments as well as the integrity of storage. ICT managers are therefore tasked with provisioning and maintaining often complex virtualised environments across multiple sites. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. 3

4 Cisco Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) solutions address these challenges and enable NHS organisations to meet business continuance and compliance objectives, offering benefits that include: Reduced business impact of localised and large footprint disaster events. Improved productivity through enhanced application and data availability. Meeting compliance objectives and improving data security. Cisco DCI features technology that supports Local Area Network (LAN) extension, Storage Area Network (SAN) extension and Routing Optimisation between Data Centres. When deployed strategically these features provide accelerated and secure data replication, server clustering and workload mobility between geographically dispersed Data Centre sites. This allows organisations to support application and data mobility between Data Centres, maintain operational consistency and hence improve business resilience. LAN extension A critical network design requirement for deployment of distributed virtualisation and cluster technologies is having all servers in the same Layer 2 Virtual LAN (VLAN). Meeting this requirement often means extending VLANs over Layer 3 networks and in order to support this a key component of LAN Extension technology is used known as Overlay Transport Virtualisation (OTV). OTV is a new industry solution, providing customers with an innovative yet simple means of extending Layer 2 networks over Layer 3 networks for both intra and inter Data Centre applications. The Layer 2 connectivity provided by OTV coupled with the scoping of failure domains enables non-disruptive, cluster-based disaster recovery schemes as well as stateful workload mobility - instrumental in providing transparent disaster avoidance. The capability to move workloads transparently also allows maintenance and change management processes to be carried out without requiring downtime. OTV is available on the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series of switches.

5 A Hot Topic in the NHS: Evolution of the Data Centre 4. Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance SAN extension In simplest terms SAN Extension technology addresses the challenge of linking SANs in different Data Centres, sometimes over long distances. However, in virtualised environments there are added challenges such as the availability of virtual machine data on storage devices. For example as one virtual machine moves from one Data Centre to another, access to associated storage must also be considered. Several solutions are possible including: Shared storage across Data Centres. Storage following virtual machines/applications across Data Centres. Cached storage following virtual machines/applications. The Cisco MDS 9000 Series of storage switches provide a range of integrated options for linking SANs together between sites in order to support disk or host based data replication including long reach Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP). The MDS platform also delivers enhanced features such as disk and tape write acceleration, which optimises the protocol exchanges over long distance links, delivering greatly improved performance for replication and tape back-up traffic. High performance hardware compression for IP links ensures maximum throughput for a given bandwidth and integrated IPSec security ensures the privacy of data while in transit between Data Centres. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. 5

6 Cisco MDS 9000 Series Routing Optimisation Business Continuance with application mobility across Data Centres is further enhanced by using the Routing Optimisation features in DCI. A primary requirement for application mobility is that the migrated virtual machine maintains all of its existing network connections after it has been moved to the secondary Data Centre. Traffic routing to and from the virtual machine must to be optimised to maintain performance, independent of location. Cisco Global Site Selector (GSS) and the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) address this requirement by working together to track the movement of the virtual machine and traffic is intelligently routed to the Data Centre where the application resides, whilst maintaining symmetrical routing important for IP services such as Firewalls. Solution Highlights Business Continuance Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) technology to link Data Centres Nexus 7000 OTV (Overlay Transport Virtualisation) for LAN Extension GSS (Global Site Selector) & ACE (Application Control Engine) for Routing Optimisation MDS9000 for integrated storage; SAN Extension Benefits Scalability and high availability Validated interoperability with the leading storage and system vendors Lower total cost of ownership Industry-leading technology

7 A Hot Topic in the NHS: Evolution of the Data Centre 4. Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance Further Information Cisco DCI solutions takes a systems-based approach to put all these components together in a multi-site virtual Data Centre architecture, providing an optimised and resilient Data Centre design, a key component of any Business Continuance strategy. For more information and support on this or any other aspects of Data Centre design, please contact your Cisco Healthcare Account Manager. North West David Park North East, Yorkshire (N & W) Paul Cook East Midlands, Humberside, Yorkshire (S) Sarah Calveley West Midlands & Wales Gary Eke South West & South Central Graham Small South East & East of England Gary Luttman London Terry Robinson London Marc Inman Central Accounts Ed Powell All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. 7

8 A Hot Topic in the NHS: Evolution of the Data Centre 4. Data Centre Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance Important Notice The guidance provided in this paper is of a generic nature and not specific to your organisation or operational environment. Please contact your Cisco partner or Account Manager to discuss your specific requirements. Errors and omissions are accepted. No warranty is given or implied Cisco Systems Inc Americas Headquarters Cisco Systems, Inc. San Jose, CA Asia Pacific Headquarters Cisco Systems (USA) Pte. Ltd. Singapore Europe Headquarters Cisco Systems International BV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at CCDE, CCENT, CCSI, Cisco Eos, Cisco HealthPresence, Cisco IronPort, the Cisco logo, Cisco Nurse Connect, Cisco Pulse, Cisco SensorBase, Cisco StackPower, Cisco StadiumVision, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco WebEx, DCE, Flip Channels, Flip for Good, Flip Mino, Flipshare (Design), Flip Ultra, Flip Video, Flip Video (Design), Instant Broadband, and Welcome to the Human Network are trademarks; Changing the Way We Work, Live, Play, and Learn, Cisco Capital, Cisco Capital (Design), Cisco:Financed (Stylized), Cisco Store, Flip Gift Card, and One Million Acts of Green are service marks; and Access Registrar, Aironet, AllTouch, AsyncOS, Bringing the Meeting To You, Catalyst, CCDA, CCDP, CCIE, CCIP, CCNA, CCNP, CCSP, CCVP, Cisco, the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert logo, Cisco IOS, Cisco Lumin, Cisco Nexus, Cisco Press, Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems Capital, the Cisco Systems logo, Cisco Unity, Collaboration Without Limitation, Continuum, EtherFast, EtherSwitch, Event Center, Explorer, Follow Me Browsing, GainMaker, ilynx, IOS, iphone, IronPort, the IronPort logo, Laser Link, LightStream, Linksys, MeetingPlace, MeetingPlace Chime Sound, MGX, Networkers, Networking Academy, PCNow, PIX, PowerKEY, PowerPanels, PowerTV, PowerTV (Design), PowerVu, Prisma, ProConnect, ROSA, SenderBase, SMARTnet, Spectrum Expert, StackWise, WebEx, and the WebEx logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (0910R)