Disaster Recovery - LAN

Disaster recovery over a LAN

LAN recovery provides a readily available backup server which will take over operations when the active server or application fails.

Recovery over a LAN is often simpler and faster than WAN recovery as bandwidth and connectivity issues do not come in to play in the same way as they would for a WAN solution.

All servers used can be active, there is no need for a redundant server, and servers do not need to be similar, or paired in any way.

Without shared storage

Replication is required to make sure that the data on the backup server is up-to-date. Multi-node solutions which replicate to 2 more servers are also possible, but to simplify the description, a 2-node solution is described. The solution works as follows:

Set up 2 servers on the LAN with replication to mirror changes between the servers

Monitor both servers with LifeKeeper to detect any application or hardware downtime

Failover to the backup server if there any disruption in service to your users

Fix any problems which occurred while users are using the backup server
Returning the faulty server back to service, will cause the data replication to resynchronize

Once data is resynchronised, the original server can become the active server once again