Deploying Global Clusters for Site Disaster Recovery via Symantec Storage Foundation on Infortrend Systems

Deploying Global Clusters for Site Disaster Recovery via Symantec Storage Foundation on Infortrend Systems Application Notes Abstract: This document describes how to apply global clusters in site disaster recovery using Symantec Storage Foundation High Availability on Infortrend systems.. Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Infortrend, ESVA, EonStor, EonNAS, and EonPath are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The content provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind.

Table of Contents Products Covered in this Document... 2 Introduction... 3 About Storage Foundation High Availability... 3 About Global Clusters... 3 Scenario... 5 System Configuration... 6 System Components... 6 Hardware Requirements... 6 Software Requirements... 6 System Architecture... 6 Storage Configuration... 7 RAID Configuration... 7 SFHA Configuration... 7 Veritas Cluster Server Configuration... 7 Storage Foundation Configuration... 12 SFHA Administration... 14 CLI Commands... 14 Conclusion... 17 Reference... 17 Products Covered in this Document These application notes apply to the following models: ESDS-B24F-R2852-6 ESDS-S12F-R2850 ESDS-S12F-R2851 ESDS-S16F-R2850 ESDS-S16F-R2851 ESDS-S16F-R2852-6 ESDS-S24F-R2850 ESDS-S24F-R2851 ESDS-S48F-R2852-6 ESVA-F75-2830 Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 2 / 17

Further compatibility information can be found at the Symantec Hardware Compatibility List (HCL): https://sort.symantec.com/hclcentral/diskarray For more information on disk subsystem configuration, please check the user manual included with your storage system, or visit the official Infortrend website: http://www.infortrend.com Introduction These application notes highlight the implementation of Storage Foundation High Availability, or SFHA, on Infortrend systems. The document offers a clear step-by-step format, so readers can easily carry out disaster recovery using geographically separate Veritas Clusters that can be connected to support application failover from primary sites to secondary backup sites. Thus, applications can remain online and functional even during major outages. Combined, SFHA and Infortrend systems keep your IT environments robust and resilient in the face of numerous disaster scenarios. About Storage Foundation High Availability Veritas Storage Foundation by Symantec includes the Veritas File System (VxFS) and Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM), with both offering various feature levels. Veritas File System delivers high performance journaling towards easy management and quick application recovery. It emphasizes scalable performance, continuous availability, increased I/O throughput, and strong structural integrity. Veritas Volume Manager helps overcome physical disk storage constraints. With it, you can configure, share, manage, and optimize storage I/O performance via a network without interrupting data availability. Veritas Volume Manager also features user-friendly online storage management tools to reduce downtime and increase productivity. You can add High Availability functionality to Storage Foundation by installing Veritas Cluster Server software, or VCS, which was developed by Symantec to provide you with these benefits: Reduced application downtime Server consolidation and failover Management of multiple applications in heterogeneous environments About Global Clusters A global cluster connects clusters at separate locations and enables wide-area failover and disaster Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 3 / 17

recovery. Local clustering provides local failover for individual sites or buildings, and while campus and replicated cluster configurations offer protection against disasters affecting small geographic areas, large scale disasters such as serious floods, storms, and earthquakes can cause outages for an entire city or region, disabling all local clusters. In these situations, you can ensure data availability by migrating applications to sites located considerable distances apart, or globally. In a global cluster, if an entire local cluster fails, applications are migrated to a system in another cluster. Clustering on a global level therefore requires the replication of shared data to remote sites, which traditionally was a complicated process, but now has been made much more user-accessible. Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 4 / 17

Scenario Figure 1: disaster recovery solution scenario These application notes mainly focus on protecting applications from faults in a VCS global cluster environment. To simulate large scale disasters that may cause widespread outages and service disruptions, we need two clusters associated with respective Infortrend storage systems, each representing a site. Should one site fail, applications automatically failover to another node in the secondary site as figure 1 shows. Therefore, SFHA provides high availability protection. The application migration example occurs between the primary site and the secondary site. VCS global clusters on Infortrend storage ensure data availability by migrating applications to remote clusters located at a safe distance from disaster-affected sites. Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 5 / 17

System Configuration System Components Hardware Requirements 2 (64-bit) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v11.0 SP1 SFHA servers 3 NIC interfaces per server 4 FC/iSCSI ports per server Software Requirements Symantec Veritas Storage Foundation High Availability 6.0 (SFHA 6.0) System Architecture Figure 2: system topology To create a Veritas Global Cluster environment for implementing disaster recovery, we need two hosts with their respective Infortrend storage systems as figure 2 shows. Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 6 / 17

Storage Configuration RAID Configuration Figure 3: RAID configuration Steps: 1. Create a RAID-5 LD 2. Create a logical volume (LV) 3. Edit logical unit number (LUN) mapping SFHA Configuration Veritas Cluster Server Configuration Install VCS at the primary site: SFHA-Primary:~ # /opt/vrts/install/installvcs -configure SFHA-Primary Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 7 / 17

Figure 5: system connectivity view for the secondary site After successful VCS installation, you can access system connectivity views via cluster explorer as figures 4 and 5 show. The primary and secondary clusters are now properly configured. Storage Foundation Configuration Thanks to close Symantec and Infortrend cooperation, Infortrend fibre channel products are fully certified and included in the Symantec Array Support List (ASL). After installing Storage Foundation, you can place partitions on Infortrend subsystems under VxVM control using the below commands. For supported models, please check this link: https://sort.symantec.com/hclcentral/diskarray To successfully implement disaster recovery, we need to place two partitions from respective Infortrend storage systems at different physical locations under VxVM control. At the primary site SFHA-Primary:~ # vxdisk list SFHA-Primary:~ # vxdisk scandisks SFHA-Primary:~ # vxdisk list Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 12 / 17

At the secondary site SFHA-Secondary:~ # vxdisk list SFHA-Secondary:~ # vxdisk scandisks SFHA-Secondary:~ # vxdisk list As the above screenshots show, use the command vxdisk scandisks to scan Infortrend storage systems. In addition, you can use vxdisk list to make sure that SFHA properly detects your Infortrend storage systems. After this step, required installation is complete. Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 13 / 17

SFHA Administration We have created two local clusters so far. Now we need to build a global cluster environment that includes these two local clusters. Then, simulating a large scale disaster, we will migrate one application from the primary site to the secondary site. CLI Commands Configure global cluster components at the primary site Configure global cluster components at the secondary site Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 14 / 17

Verify that the gcoip resource that monitors the virtual IP address for inter-cluster communication is online Define the remote cluster and heartbeat cluster objects at the primary site Define the remote cluster and heartbeat cluster objects at the secondary site Check the remote cluster status from the primary site Check the remote cluster status from the secondary site Create a global service group at the primary site and the secondary site Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 15 / 17

Check the remote cluster from status view Switch the global service group across clusters Global service group online at the secondary site Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 16 / 17

Conclusion Symantec Veritas Storage Foundation High Availability 6.0, or SFHA 6.0, greatly improves failover capabilities across geographically distinct clusters. Integrated with fully-certified Infortrend storage systems, SFHA protects your data from critical damage in the event of a major disaster, ensuring smooth and quick recovery that serves to minimize downtime even in extreme outage scenarios. It provides businesses with mission-critical data center continuity for every application, and prevents interruption to make sure you can continue serving your customers and maintain adequate productivity levels at all times. Reference For more information on SFHA, please check the following resources: Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Installation Guide Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability 6.0 official web site Veritas Cluster Server Installation Guide Veritas Cluster Server User s Guide Veritas Cluster Server Administrator's Guide Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability Replication Administrator's Guide Copyright 2013 Infortrend Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Page 17 / 17