Windows File & Print Server failover
For a seamless recovery of your Windows File servers,
SteelEye Life Keeper from Open Minds guarantees to provide you with a complete
disaster recovery solution ensuring that you maintain business continuity. Our
high availability solutions will grant continuous data protection providing
data replication as well as the monitoring of all your Windows File servers to
ensure failover through the Java GUI.
Windows file servers are protected by monitoring key processes and
file systems. When a file server or dependent resource is detected
not to respond, LifeKeeper will optionally attempt to undertake a local
recovery on the server (depending upon configuration).
If this recovery fails, then the file server is recovered on the remote server. In order for failover to take place, all nodes within the cluster need to
be able to access the same data files (i.e. the data the file server is
sharing with the end users). There are two ways data can be available to
all clients, either using a shared storage solution (for example SAN, NAS,
SCSI), or LifeKeepers Data Replication add on can be used to replicate
data between servers over a LAN or WAN.
Shared storage allows for a larger cluster to be created, and can also
scale further.
Data Replication on the other hand, allows the two nodes to be any distance
apart and normally reduces the cost of the solution. It can therefore be
used to produce an identical copy of the data on a remote site or different
server, effectively enhancing availability and reliability by giving you
redundant storage in separate locations
As illustrated in the image below, LifeKeeper can run in an Active/Active
configuration if necessary. Active/Active configurations allow all nodes in
a cluster to be active, allowing maximum hardware utilisation while still
providing redundancy.
Further down Active/Standby configurations are discussed with the
Data Replication option
In the above illustration two nodes form the cluster. Each node runs an IIS
web server as well as sharing files to a network. Both nodes have access to
the same shared storage unit. In the event of one node failing, the other
node is capable of running all four applications, therefore ensuring
continuity of service.
Data Replication - eliminating the need for Shared Storage
LifeKeeper data replication replicates data from a local disk located
on an active server to a local disk located on a backup server.
When recovery on the backup server takes place, data is up-to-date
due to the replication that has already taken place.
Recovery of Windows File Servers to a remote site
Using the data replication feature, it is possible to undertake remote
failover to a remote site. This normally involves the use of asynchronous
data replication for performance purposes. LifeKeeper is used to initiate
and coordinate the failover to the remote site.
The data replication software provides numerous additional features, for
instance is is possible to pause the mirror and undertake a backup on the
remote copy of the data, and then un-pause the mirror without suffering a
full resynchronisation of the data. Further information on this can be
found hereJava
GUI administration
A Java GUI simplifies administration, configuration and management
of the failover and data replication process. This can be done via
the console or through a web browser