Perforce High Availability and Disaster Recovery Options Outline - - PDF document

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Perforce High Availability and Disaster Recovery Options

Outline

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Volume Layout
• HA and DR Ojectives
• DR Features and Benefits

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Outline

• DR and HA Configuration Recommendations
• DR and HA Solutions
• Configuration Summary
• Automated Failover

Introduction

• These are just outlines of some high

availability and disaster recovery options.

• General information on options that achieve

varying levels of availability and disaster recovery.

• This is not intended to replace a specific

assessment of your environment.

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Definitions

• Network Attached Storage – NAS
• Storage Area Network – SAN
• Single Point of Failure – SPOF
• Disaster Recovery – DR
• High Availability – HA

Definitions

• Perforce Server Deployment Package – SDP
• Replication – Copying all files needed to
• perate Perforce
• Extreme Availability – Replication + real time

Perforce journal replication.

• Recovery Time Objective – RTO
• Recovery Point Objective – RPO

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• Metadata – DB files – RAID 1+0
• Logs – Journal and log files – RAID 1+0
• Depotdata – Versioned files, checkpoints, and

all other files used on your server. – RAID 5/6

Volume Layout

• Availability and Recovery objectives should

come from a business impact analysis (BIA).

• The BIA helps quantify risk levels and financial

impact.

• The outcome of the BIA defines the RPO and

RTO.

HA and DR Objectives

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• Daily Verification of checkpoints
• Status notifications
• Versioned file verification
• Fast recovery from failures
• Reduced downtime for checkpoints

DR Features and Benefits

• Two machines minimum – Primary and DR
• Identical Hardware
• Identical configurations – OS, file system, etc.
• A backup solution in addition to your DR site

DR and HA Configuration Recommendations

6 Low Cost DR Only

RTO: This solution does not provide HA and therefore does not mitigate the risk of downtime. It provides business continuity in the event of a disaster. RPO: Data modified since the last synchronization between the primary and DR servers.

Warm Standby with DR

RTO: Generally low, can be less than 30 minutes if minimal data loss is acceptable by failing over to hot standby or DR system. RPO: Data modified since the last synchronization between the primary and DR servers.

7 HA Only

RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Barring the failure of your SAN or NAS, there is zero data loss. These storage solutions are designed to not lose your data. In the event of a disaster, your RPO is the amount

• f data modified since your last backup.

HA with low cost DR

RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Same as the HA solution except that your DR system can now bring the Perforce server process back on-line faster, and your RPO is as low as your replication frequency.

8 HA with HA DR and low RPO

RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Normally zero for local failures, and under one hour for failover to the DR site. (Can be as little as 5 – 10 minutes.)

Extreme Availability (EA), EA DR and zero RPO

RTO: Near zero RPO: zero

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Configuration Summary Automated Failover of Perforce

• Some customers with limited success
• Others have created data corruption
• Good to have a failover script
• But a human should launch that script after

problem analysis

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Automated Failover of Perforce

• Extreme HA with transparent failover is very

complex

• EA efforts are best applied in environments

where is zero downtime is an absolute requirement

• Most SCM environments do not demand the

costs or efforts to maintain an EA solution.