Symantec Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows Storage management, high availability and disaster recovery for physical and virtual Windows applications Data Sheet: High Availability Overview Symantec Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows is a comprehensive solution that delivers data and application availability for Microsoft Windows Server physical and virtual environments. Storage Foundation HA for Windows combines two industry-leading technologies: Symantec TM Storage Foundation for Windows and Symantec Cluster Server, powered by Veritas. Storage Foundation for Windows brings advanced online storage management to Microsoft Windows Server environments by virtualizing the storage seen by a host, so that administrators can optimally manage, configure, and share storage. Storage Foundation delivers storage management without interruption to servers and the business-critical applications and services they host, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint Server and Hyper-V. Storage Foundation HA for Windows also includes Symantec TM Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) and Symantec TM Replicator Option, making your data center more dynamic while reducing overall costs. The high availability and disaster recovery component, Cluster Server monitors an application and all associated components, including database, network, and storage resources. If a failure is detected, it immediately fails over the application along with dependent resources and restarts it on another available physical or virtual server in the cluster, or secondary data center, depending on the configuration set up. Highlights SmartIO - Granular and intelligent application-level caching, enables storage QoS for mission-critical applications Storage pooling for Hyper-V - Storage services on a per virtual machine (VM) basis for Hyper-V virtual machines Availability across any distance Local, metropolitan, and wide area failover for high availability and disaster recovery. Fast t failover and intelligent monitoring Sub-minute failover of applications, regardless of configuration size, and an Intelligent Monitoring Framework that enhances fault detection performance. No single point of failure Moves an application to an available server in the event of a failure coordinating application dependency startup. Ensure availability in virtual environments Failover applications running on VMware without a VM reboot to a standby healthy virtual machine for fast recovery of applications from any failure, without impacting VMware features such as VMware vmotion and Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS). Providing failover for applications running in Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines is expanded with Cluster Server support of Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 Virtual Fibre Channel. Virtual Business Services for multi-tier application high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) Multi-tier application high availability and disaster recovery through application orchestration that includes automatic fault remediation and start-stop ordering of application components running across multiple OS, hardware, and physical and virtual platforms including components running across Microsoft Failover Cluster. Automated disaster recovery testing Fire drill tests disaster recovery configurations without affecting production environments. Multi-cluster ter management and reporting Manages and reports on multiple local and remote clusters from a single unified Web-based console. 1
Broad integration with Windows-based applications Unique integration and optimization with Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint servers for increased application availability. Replication integration with zero data loss Manages application failover and failback with Cluster Server, including support for Replicator Option and other array vendors' replication solutions. SmartIO Enable granular and intelligent caching for critical applications or Hyper-V virtual machines. With SmartIO, application architects, server administrators, and database administrators can increase I/O throughput and lower I/O latency for critical SQL instances. Additionally, SmartIO helps in stacking multiple Hyper-V virtual machines without ending up with an I/O logjam. SmartIO provides caching at a volume level to accelerate application read performance. It protects data by using a write through cache to the HDD, providing persistent high availability integrity of application data. SmartIO comes with automatic caching heuristics that adapt to the application s I/ O access patterns. Users can additionally tune SmartIO based on additional hints they may have on the applications. In internal Symantec lab tests replicating real-world use cases, SmartIO delivers up to 3x performance improvement, and helps reduce storage costs by 70%. Storage pooling for Hyper-V As more Windows instances are getting virtualized, virtual machines admins are constantly challenged with the current storage provisioning model, where there is no per virtual machine storage service. Typically, virtual machines are lumped together on single LUNs, resulting in the same storage service which can be disastrous for critical applications if that LUN/Array has a failure. Storage pooling in Storage Foundation for Windows provides storage services on a per virtual machine basis for Hyper-V virtual machines. The per virtual machine data can now be stored as mirrored volumes across arrays, protecting virtual machine data from single LUN/Arrays failures. This is also helpful in LiveMigrating virtual machines across campus distances, where storage resides at respective sites. Availability across any distance, with automated disaster recovery testing Whether it's a business-critical Exchange email infrastructure, SharePoint Portal Server, or critical customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications using SQL Server databases, Storage Foundation HA for Windows enables local, metropolitan, and wide area high availability and disaster recovery with a single solution. Cluster Server can scale from a simple 2-node local cluster up to a 32-node cluster that spans thousands of kilometers across different IP subnets. Upon failover to a different IP network, Cluster Server updates the application's network identity, so clients can quickly connect to the alternate site. Cluster Server also automates the takeover process so that replicated storage is imported at the failover target and replication roles are reversed. With the Cluster Server Fire Drill feature, organizations can test disaster recovery scenarios regularly without exposure to risk or application downtime. Cluster Server is the only solution that integrates automated testing with a marketleading disaster recovery solution. Now administrators can make frequent changes to the IT infrastructure and simultaneously reflect those changes at a remote site. As Fire Drill does not disrupt production applications, it can be run as often as required to ensure that critical applications will recover in the event of an actual disaster. Fast application recovery with fast failover and Intelligent Monitoring Framework With a new storage architecture in Storage Foundation for Windows, Cluster Server s failover time is no longer strictly dependent on the number of storage resources in a service group. Configurations are able to scale to large numbers of 2
storage resources without impacting failover times. Coupled with a new Intelligent Monitoring Framework that provides instantaneous detection of and reaction to faults, application failover with Storage Foundation HA for Windows is fast, typically occurring in a minute or less for large configurations. An added benefit of Intelligent Monitoring Framework is a significant reduction of CPU and memory utilization. No single point of failure Cluster Server is a highly resilient, scalable architecture in which each node in the cluster synchronizes its configuration information and status with the other nodes. As a result, there is no single point of failure a vital requirement for true high availability and disaster recovery. Cluster Server does not require that a majority of nodes in a cluster be online for services to continue running. By eliminating this requirement, Cluster Server offers the flexibility to efficiently consolidate the amount of server resources in and between sites and reduces downtime risks tha would be incurred with cluster unavailability. Ensure application availability in virtual environments Cluster Server provides a single solution for clustering both physical and virtual systems. Administrators can monitor an application running within a virtual machine and recover it in the event of a failure. Storage Foundation HA for Windows provides unparalleled support for physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) configurations, so organizations can protect any application/database over local or wide area distances. Application failover in VMware environments Cluster Server provides IT organizations with the ability to monitor applications running inside Windows virtual machines residing on VMware ESX servers. Cluster Server monitors the application and in the case of a failure, handles the recovery without a reboot to a healthy virtual machine running on a different ESX server. Cluster Server enables fast application recovery in response to a wide range of failures while fully supporting, the native VMware tools such as vmotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Cluster Server can be easily managed from vsphere client through a vcenter plugin and is easy to set up with its auto-discovery and auto-configuration capabilities. Cluster Server provides an added layer of protection even when an operating system corruption issue occurs. In the instance of an operating system corruption issue, a restart of the application or virtual machine will not solve the problem. One option is to restore the last known good copy of a virtual machine, but this can be a time consuming and manual process. Cluster Server effectively solves this problem by providing the ability to recover the application in a new, healthy virtual machine on a different ESX server without a reboot resulting in much faster application recovery and less downtime. The same application failover capability can help minimize planned downtime during maintenance activities, such as OS patching. Application failover in Hyper-V environments Cluster Server also provides application monitoring and failover for applications running within Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. With support of Microsoft's new Virtual Fibre Channel feature in Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Cluster Server can now provide failover of applications whose shared application data is placed on fibre channel attached storage that is directly presented to virtual machines. Virtual Business Service for multi-tier application high availability and disaster recovery Cluster Server integrates with Veritas TM Operations Manager to provide Virtual Business Service for easier and more comprehensive HA/DR for multi-tiered applications, including applications using native Windows Microsoft Failover Cluster on a physical or virtual tier. Virtual Business Service provides single-click start and stop of the business service with the various tiers coming online or going offline in the correct order. Setting up disaster recovery for a business service extends Virtual Business Service capabilities so that in the 3
event of a failure at the production site, the disaster recovery site is notified and the business service started at that site. Virtual Business Service propagates the change at the production site and ensures that all tiers are taken offline in the correct order. Other business services at the production site continue to run without interruption. Virtual Business Services solves the challenges of multi-tier applications with application orchestration and application availability from a simple interface. Multi-cluster management and reporting Operations Manager simplifies the task of managing multiple clusters by providing a centralized graphical user interface (GUI) to monitor, manage, and configure Cluster Server clusters running on multiple platforms in multiple data centers. With Operations Manager, administrators can manage configuration changes across multiple systems in a cluster with just a few clicks. They can also run detailed historical trend reports for clusters, applications, and servers, measuring service-level agreements in aggregate, and tracking results over time. Notification policies across all clusters can be easily modified. Administrator rights and roles can be set for different users in the IT organization. Most importantly, Operations Manager provides a single place to instantly view the health of all clustered applications in the data center. Broad integration with Windows-based applications Cluster Server is uniquely integrated with many applications and databases including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, Oracle, and Symantec Enterprise Vault. It also supports custom applications with an intuitive configuration utility to provide the highest levels of availability. Whether providing availability for standard or custom applications, Cluster Server manages more than just the application instance; it handles all associated components including server network, and associated storage, ensuring a robust and graceful failover (over any distance) of all relevant resources. Replication integration and zero data loss disaster recovery Storage Foundation HA for Windows combined with Replicator Option provides a fully integrated and coordinated solution for data replication and application availability. This coordination ensures that, if a failure occurs, both the application and its data can be recovered at an alternate location. Application and data can also be easily switched back to the original location at the appropriate time. Volume Replicator also provides bunker replication, so that organizations can select the ultimate strategy of replicating data over any distance without losing a single transaction, for a recovery point objective (RPO) of zero. In addition to its tight integration with Replicator Option, Storage Foundation HA for Windows also manages arraybased replication technologies, including EMC SRDF/Star (synchronous and asynchronous), EMC MirrorView and MirrorView/A, Hitachi TrueCopy, IBM MetroMirror, and Network Appliance SnapMirror. Supported OS platforms, applications, and storage devices Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 (x64), 2012 R2 Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, 2010 Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, 2010, 2013 Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, 2012 Oracle 10g R2, 11g, 12c Symantec Enterprise Vault 9.0, 10 Please also consult the latest t hardware and software compatibility list t on SORT 4
Feature SmartIO Storage Pooling Operations Manager Benefit Granular, intelligent application level caching for Hyper-V VMs. Storage service offered on per Hyper-V VM basis. Centralizes monitoring and reporting across thousands of server platforms for complete visibility to application, server, and storage devices. More Information Visit our website http://enterprise.symantec.com To speak with a Product Specialist in the U.S. Call toll-free 1 (800) 745 6054 Dynamic multi-pathing Online Administration FlashSnap Automated performance tuning Hot relocation RAID support Replicator Option Replicator Option: Bunker Replication Cluster Server Balances I/O across all available paths between server and storage array to improve performance and availability. Common failures from I/O path, HBA, or switches can be avoided because admins can spread I/O across all multiple paths. Limits the amount of time that disks need to be offline for maintenance by performing volume resizing (including shrinking), domain reconfiguration, backup, and off-host processing while the data remains online and available. Take instant, full-volume, snapshots of data for off-host processing, on-host backup, and backup. Only resynchronizes changed blocks for fast resynchronization. Automatically tunes each write for optimal performance. Admins no longer need to manually tune writes for performance. Automatically migrates data from failing disks to healthy disks. Supports several levels of RAID optimized availability and performance. Continuous data replication, enabling rapid and reliable recovery of critical applications at remote recovery sites. Replicates data over any distance without losing a single transaction RPO of zero over any distance. Monitors status of applications and all dependent components for physical virtual environments. When a failure occurs, Cluster Server automatically chooses the least utilized server and automatically adds repaired servers back into the selection pool when they rejoin the cluster. To speak with a Product Specialist outside the U.S. For specific country offices and contact numbers, please visit our website. About Symantec Symantec protects the world s information and is the global leader in security, backup, and availability solutions. Our innovative products and services protect people and information in any environment from the smallest mobile device to the enterprise data center to cloud-based systems. Our industry-leading expertise in protecting data, identities, and interactions gives our customers confidence in a connected world. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at go.symantec.com/socialmedia. Symantec World Headquarters 350 Ellis St. Mountain View, CA 94043 USA +1 (650) 527 8000 1 (800) 721 3934 www.symantec.com Centralized management Automated disaster recovery testing Support for all major storage arrays Lets admins monitor, manage, and report on Cluster Server implementations on different platforms from a single, Webbased Cluster Management Console. Tests both failover and replication configurations without affecting the production environment. Lets organizations choose the storage hardware that best fits their needs. Copyright 2014 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, and the Checkmark Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 21214619-3 04/14 5