Mal Everett Technical Director Chris Tew Business Development Manager
AGENDA Tessitura key items we need to protect Traditional methods for High Availability Now lets look at Virtualization Performance Recovery Point and Recovery Time Objectives Explained! Snapshots SAN and VMware Examples Questions
Key Items we need to protect The Tessitura system is made up of many elements: Microsoft SQL database (of course SQL 2008 by May 1 st ) Web Front End server Web API SEATS Server Payment Gateway Reporting Batch Processor And other add-in s like T-Stats and so on.
Traditional methods for High Availability Traditionally, using Physical Servers hardware: WebAPI Server, SEATS Server, Report Batch Processor These are mainly processes or Windows Services: Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) Protect with two specialized servers and shared storage Databases Protect with Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) - or MS SQL Transaction logging / Mirroring (requires redundant hardware) Web Front End server Multiple (Linux or Microsoft) servers and load balancing appliances Redundant hardware Payment Gateway
Lets look at Virtualization Key Typically physical servers achieve low usage, particularly of CPU (around 10-15% per physical server) Vmware s vsphere virtualization technology makes it possible: To package a complete x86 server running Windows or Linux as a portable Virtual Machine Multiple virtual machines run simultaneously and independently on a single x86/amd server host To have centralized management To treat all the resources together as a common pool Achieve High Available solutions not previously possible To get the full value you need Shared disc Storage as provided by a SAN (Storage Area Network) SANS are typically manufactured by HP, IBM, EMC, Netapp and a few others. They do require careful implementation and management to ensure they are setup and running correctly. The bonus is that the Virtualization software, here lets zoom in on VMware s Vsphere, gives you extras like Distributed Resource Scheduling High Availability Fault Tolerance (more on these latter)
VMware
DRS
HA
RPO and RTO - Explained
RPO and RTO (2) In a lot of cases (in the past) the standard recovery is based upon the previous evenings Backup Tapes Given time windows and data volumes, the previous evenings backup may be not be full These give a RPO maybe a sliding point that may be anything up to 24 hrs (ie the previous nights backup) To use the backup may involve repairing hardware, and restoring from tape. Usually it takes as long, if not longer, to restore from tape, than the time it took to write them. These give a RTO maybe anything up 24 Hrs, once hardware is available to begin the recovery process on (the hardware usually has to be a close fit to the original) So after an event or failure until the point in time when things are up and working again, the time for the recovery will be approximately a day after, and the restored environment, maybe two days behind. There will be a window of a day where NO processing has taking place. With Virtualization we can do much better than this!
Typical RPO and RTOs with Virtualization Event Minutes Downtime Intervention VMware in your Computer room Resourcing Issue 1~2 0 Automatic Physical Server Host (HA) 2~3 2~3 Automatic Physical Server Host (FT) milliseconds 0 Automatic Application Monitoring, SLA + snapshots Application Failure 60 mins RPO 60 mins RTO Manual Reboot server/contact vendor/restore to snapshot if necessary Monitoring, SLA, DR and recovery site Site or SAN Failure 2 Hrs RPO 2 Hrs RTO Manual Failover to offsite
Backup and Storage Features SANs vs VMware Snapshotting Most SANs can do LUN (logical disc volume) Snapshots and SAN<> SAN Replication. Some can do application aware Snapshots. Some add-on programs can take Advantage of VMware s features to Provide the same features as the SAN in a Storage agnostic manner. Advantages: Recovery Image AND File Level, Quick start from Image, Isolation & Sandboxing Test Environments
An example SAN<>SAN
An Example using VMware aware Snapshots
Some of the products mentioned VMware vsphere Enterprise Plus (DRS, HA, FT and Storage Vmotion) HP SANS P2000 series iscsi/fc small system SANs P4000 series iscsi EVA - Enterprise Virtual Array (fiber channel, high performance / capacity) AAPT Mid Band ethernet (10Mbs.. 40 Mbs over copper / fiber ) Fibre ethernet (100 Mbs) Elmtree Managed Services, Application Monitoring and Datacenter Hosting
QUESTIONS