Adding a second server for an existing enterprise vault for high availability

Hello edgeo,

Enterprise Vault with Building Blocks would be an option for this configuration. One of the requirements is that all the resouces needs to be on 'shared' disks. Take a look at these technotes:

About Enterprise Vault building blocks
http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO37984

How to setup building blocks and configure Enterprise Vault for fail-over
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH38701

I hope this helps.

Following technote would help to know the steps invole in order to add a new EV server into existing site in your DR location.

"How to add an additional Enterprise Vault server to an existing site"
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH50844

Once you have two server then you test failover by changing DNS alias pointing to DR EV server then run USL (update service location), make sure you have VS partition/Index attached & accessible in the same way it access from production site.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH38701

hi,

thanks for the suggestions.

What I wanted was to have the exact same copy of my vault enviroment (data and sql) included in my DR location.

Then if something happens to my primary vault server, I can just point to my DR location.

I imagine,  I can have some kind of process to replicate date between the primary and DR location but can an automatic failover be set in place or I will need to do the failover manually?

 

thanks

I would use either MSCS or VCS personally, over Building Blocks, especially with regards to your requirements. Building blocks was never designed to supply the kind of solution you are after and if you try to force it to do something it wasnt designed for you are bound to hit problems.

With regards to Building Blocks, it is a manual failover process, Clustering is (or at least SHOULD be) automatic.

WIth regards to clustering EV follow the below technote for MSCS:-

MSCS - http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO58149

Or have a look at page 225 of the Install and Config Guide - http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6239

The above guide is for 10.0.3

 

You will want to Cluster SQL as well as EV if you want a complete replica of that as well, that is outside to scope of this forum unfortunately and you are better off contacting MS support for help on that, if you do cluster SQL ensure the setup is in line with Symantec's recommendations for EV DBs as there are some setups we do not recommend or support and can cause problems for EV.

If you wanted to replicate Vault Store Data/Indexes then you are more than likely looking at something along the lines of Centera or a third party tool of some description, again that is outside the scope of this forum really other than a suggestion of a solution over 'how' to do it. VS Data and Indexes are normally stored on a Shared SAN that is accessible from both sites if you have a clustered EV environment.

 

To be honest it sounds like you would be better off getting a consultant or one of our Partners involved to advise you on the best options for your business needs.

If you don't want to go with clustering you could explore our product, EVNearSync.

http://www.quadrotech-it.com/products/evnearsync/