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GulzarShaikhAUS's avatar
GulzarShaikhAUS
Level 6
9 years ago

Clustering with one physical and one virtual node with GCO

Dear Experts,

Need some expert opinion on design recommendations. 

Planning to have Enterprise Vault  in clustering configuration with VCS locally with two nodes, one physical node and one virtual node on a Hyper-v guest AND global failover with GCO to a physical server without local failover at remote site.

The OS is Windows 2008 R2 or 2012 R2.

Storage is HDS HUSVM.

Kindlty let me know if this is working solution.

business continuity
Storage Foundation for Windows
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • RiaanBadenhorst's avatar
    RiaanBadenhorst
    9 years ago

    Hello

     

    1. VFC is only available in HyperV 2012 R2 (if I recall correctly). The guests can be either 2008 or 2012, but please remember that VCS does not support EV on Windows 2012 R2.
    2. I would disable the site/tasks schedule during the time you perform the DR drill. You can then run a manual archive of a subset of mailboxes to prove that it works, but not the entire thing (unless its no that much data and you've got enough bandwidth.)
    3. Good point, we usually cluster SQL along with EV using VCS. That way you can create a VBS / Recovery Plan and fail over everything together. Its part of the USP that you don't need SQL admins or other teams involved when you're using VCS. You just click switch (or execute for the recovery plan) and it all fails over together.
    4. There used to be a defined method listed in the VVR admin guide describing how to use checkpoints and backup/restore to perform the initial sync. I've not tried that in years, we usually just start the sync and let it do its thing.

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  • AndrewB's avatar
    AndrewB
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    personally, i dont care for hyper-v but pretty sure it's supported. what are your concerns?

  • GulzarShaikhAUS's avatar
    GulzarShaikhAUS
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    I was expecting a mixed response on this. My concern was your expert opinion if this should be a workable solution, Also failing over to a virtual machine from a standalone machine, if there are any caveats , if I should be concerned about anthing after the failback has occured.

    Also after we fail back to remote site with GCO, I was wondering if turning off the archiving and only allowing the retrival would be a better approach so that a reverse resync wouldn't be neccessary.

  • RiaanBadenhorst's avatar
    RiaanBadenhorst
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    Hi,

     

    This shouldn't be a problem but you have to configure VFC on HyperV 2012 (Parent) for mapping the storage from the SAN. Both physical and virtual should be running DMP.

     

    Regarding your other questions about turning or archiving when you're in remote site... If you've performed a swtich to the remote site, that is not a DR test, you would have experienced a site failure or something else that was quite significant. So your exchange should have failed over with the rest of your apps. Also, if something bad really happened you probably wont even be able to replicate back to the primary because it would have been lost.

     

    So you really would not want to or need to disable archiving. Depends on what happened.

  • GulzarShaikhAUS's avatar
    GulzarShaikhAUS
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    Excellent points Riaan..

    Is there any feature like VFC in 2008 R2? The Hyperv servers are all 2008 R2

    About DR test, you nailed it... We would be perofmring the DR drills every 6 months and I want to make sure that the fail back is smooth... what would you suggest for DR drill?

    Also two more questions - 

    1. Shall we consider SQL replication(native) or VVR for the SQL server hosting the EV DBs. We would always want the stores/indexes and DBs to be in sync.

    2. We are also planing to perform the initial seeding by backup restore ... after the restore is done, how can I sync the pairs? will it sync?

  • RiaanBadenhorst's avatar
    RiaanBadenhorst
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    Hello

     

    1. VFC is only available in HyperV 2012 R2 (if I recall correctly). The guests can be either 2008 or 2012, but please remember that VCS does not support EV on Windows 2012 R2.
    2. I would disable the site/tasks schedule during the time you perform the DR drill. You can then run a manual archive of a subset of mailboxes to prove that it works, but not the entire thing (unless its no that much data and you've got enough bandwidth.)
    3. Good point, we usually cluster SQL along with EV using VCS. That way you can create a VBS / Recovery Plan and fail over everything together. Its part of the USP that you don't need SQL admins or other teams involved when you're using VCS. You just click switch (or execute for the recovery plan) and it all fails over together.
    4. There used to be a defined method listed in the VVR admin guide describing how to use checkpoints and backup/restore to perform the initial sync. I've not tried that in years, we usually just start the sync and let it do its thing.
  • GulzarShaikhAUS's avatar
    GulzarShaikhAUS
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    Thanks a lot Riaan,

    Understood all the points but the resync using backup/restore is still confusing.

    """"When using checkpoints, you take backup of the data on the Primary and physically ship the backup media to the Secondary location, and restore the backup on the Secondary. When you start the backup, mark the starting point, by using the checkstart operation on the Primary. When you end the backup, mark the ending point by using the checkend operation on the Primary. While the backup and restore are going on, updates are written to the Replicator Log volume. To bring the Secondary data up-to-date, restore the block-level backup. After the restore is complete, start replication to the Secondary with checkpoint using the same checkpoint name that you had specified for the checkstart operation on the Primary.

    The Secondary can be brought up-to-date only if the updates are still present in the Replicator Log volume. Using checkpoints is a multi-step process and therefore, needs to be done very carefully.""""""

    When will the replicator log will be played? 

    Also once the logs have been committed will the pair notify us about those logs being played?

  • RiaanBadenhorst's avatar
    RiaanBadenhorst
    Level 6
    9 years ago

    Example—Synchronizing the Secondary using block-level backup

    This example explains how to synchronize the Secondary RVG hr_rvg on the Secondary host london with the Primary RVG on host seattle using block-level backup and checkpoint.

    • Start a Primary checkpoint on seattle:

      # vxrvg -g hrdg -c checkpt_presync checkstart hr_rvg

    • Perform a block-level backup of the data volumes in the Primary RVG.
    • End the Primary checkpoint when the backup is complete:

      # vxrvg -g hrdg checkend hr_rvg

    • Restore the backup to the Secondary data volumes.
    • Start replication using the checkpoint after the restore is complete:

      # vradmin -g hrdg -c checkpt_presync startrep hr_rvg london

    Once you start the replication using the last command it will only replicate what was written since the start of the backup. It will then only have a small amount ot catch up on. Once it catches up its in sync.