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A Framework Approach to Ensuring ApplicationRecovery Readiness.

Sanovi's DR Management Suite ( Sanovi DRM™ ) is the leading industry DR

management software for open system applications and database. Sanovi's DR software

enables application level DR monitoring and lowers cost of operations and recovery. With

its patented software architecture, Sanovi DRM provides easy-to-deploy, highly scalable

software supporting all major enterprise database, operating systems, third party

replication software and storage solutions.

Sanovi DRM offers the following key features to ensure application recovery readiness:

Ø Dashboard view of application recovery metric including Recovery Point, Recovery

Time and DR solution healthØ Alerts on deviations that may impact application recoveryØ Out-of-box automation for DR Drills and application failoverØ Compliance and deviation reports on application recovery readinessØ Recovery dependency mapping of applications, storage, database, servers, and

replication relationships

These features enable IT organizations to effectively manage the recovery SLAs and

provide recovery assurance to the business. With its application aware framework, Sanovi

software significantly reduces the operational costs associated with the management of

disaster recovery assets and increases the productivity of the operations staff.

This paper discusses the various challenges in deploying and managing disaster recovery

solutions and specifies how Sanovi DRM addresses them to provide a comprehensive

approach to meet application recovery SLA's.

There are several influences that go into the making of an application's DR solution:

Ø Disaster recovery goals (RPO & RTO) dictate the choice of technology and the solutionØ The availability of skilled IT staff to deploy and the operational cost required to maintain

the recoveryØ IT process that track and manage change & configuration management, IT wide

monitoring & event management.

We discuss each of the above aspects in detail:

©2011 Sanovi 1

white paper



Goals Dictate Technology and Solution Choices

To help us understand the thought process that goes into deciding a DR solution, we take an

example of an Oracle database that is replicated across two sites using EMC SRDF Storage

Array replication technology (SRDF) to meet the Recovery Point Objective of five minutes.

There are at least three methods an IT recovery solution can be crafted depending on thegoals of the organization.

1. The first method is to use the Oracle replication mechanism to replicate the archive log

from the primary to the stand-by database. The volume containing the current redo log is

replicated to the secondary site using SRDF. When an outage hits the production site, the

recovery is staged by applying all archive logs to the stand-by database and then the SRDF

replicated redo log is applied to the stand-by database.

2. The second method is to use SRDF to replicate the complete database. All volumes

that contain the data files and redo logs are replicated. When an outage make the

production system unavailable, the secondary Oracle database is started in recovery mode

so that the redo log can be played back to make the secondary database transactional

consistent. This method is recommended only when synchronous replication is in force.

3. The third method is to use SRDF to replicate both the online redo log volume and the

archive log volume. When an outage makes the production database unavailable, a mirror

of the archive log mirror is mounted on the secondary database and applied. After all

archive logs are applied, the redo log is then applied to get the secondary database to the

same state as the production database.

Which of the above is the preferred solution depends on the business goals. Some of the

points to consider are:

Ø Network link cost is higher when synchronous replication is a requirement.Ø The resources and skill set required for database , replication setup and everyday

operation must be availableØ Production database performance has to be factored in if synchronous replication is

in use since every I/O write operations has to be acknowledged from the secondary

site before the application can proceed.Ø Database level corruption propagation can be delayed if log application is delayed

on the secondary site.

Sanovi Whitepaper - A Framework Approach to Ensuring Application Recovery Readiness

©2011 Sanovi 2



Technology Expertise and Operational Costs

Operationally, disaster recovery management is complex, requiring companies to invest in

skills and training. Recovery work flows such as DR Drills and Failover tend to be complex

with many steps and several dependencies. It is this complexity coupled with manual

execution of the run-book steps that results in higher operator errors and higher cost of

ownership in implementing application level disaster recovery.

Using a DR aware workflow engine, Sanovi DRM captures the process and steps required to

interface with application (e.g. Oracle), the replication scheme (e.g. SRDF), the server,

storage and network to automate deployment and operation of the recovery solution.

Sanovi DRM supports all major applications, third party replication products, OS

environments and storage platforms for the enterprise. This results in the customer

deploying pre-tested, standard and best-practices solutions every time.

Disaster Recovery Monitoring for a Changing Environment

IT recovery solutions are generally designed to handle and meet the RPO and RTO goals of

the business at the time that they are established. The real test comes with time – will it still

be able to meet the business' RPO and RTO goals? Given six months or more the number of

end-users will have changed, network traffic is different, configuration changes have

occurred. Is the disaster recovery solution keeping up? The IT department needs several

heads to tell; an application console to monitor each application, a replication console to

monitor how well the replication is doing and a network management console to monitor

the network. What about a console for the holistic recovery solution?

Sanovi offers a single console view of your IT recovery health. It interfaces with the various

layers of the solution and reports on real-time Recovery Point, Recovery Time andreplication Datalag from the application's point of view.

Sanovi's application service modules monitor and alert/propagate configuration and

environment changes in the primary site to the secondary site so that failover to the

secondary site works senselessly.

Regular Test Drills for verification of DR readiness

Testing is the best way to build confidence that DR solutions work as designed. In reality,

companies test less often then should with good reason. DR Drill often results in


©2011 Sanovi 3



operational disruption of production schedules, additional costs and labour intensive co-

ordination efforts between multiple groups.

Sanovi DR Drill module provides the capability to automate DR Drill workflows easily and

execute regular DR drills smoothly, reliably and automatically. The process of co-

ordination, managing dependencies and execution of steps can be automated using the DR

Drill module.

Sanovi's DR Drill modules enable non-intrusive testing using snapshots or backup copies of

data on the DR enabling risk-free recovery testing and validation.

Automated DR Workflows - Failover and Drills

Sanovi DRM supports and recognizes DR solution signatures for standard enterpriseapplications. DR Solution signatures are packaged with out-of-box best industry practice

workflows for normal DR operations, failover application recovery and DR Drills. Sanovi

DRM recognizes that DR solution goes through a life-cycle that includes normal operations,

recovery operations that include failover and fallback and DR Drills that include switchover

and switchback. Sanovi DRM uses a DR aware engine to orchestrate and execute workflows

on appropriate components. Pre-packaged workflows can be customized to meet the end

user requirements. A common case is, on failover the secondary database is recovered andis ready to accept user requests. However, most replication solutions by themselves don't

address application failover tasks such as re-routing network connections and bring up of

dependent applications. Sanovi DRM supports Recovery Dependency Mapping that can

ensure that failover tasks are executed in the correct order and end-to-end application

failover is completed in the optimal time.

As a part of comprehensive support for DR life-cycle, transparent fallback to primary

systems when they become available is equally important. Sanovi provides the capability to

automate the fallback process, ensuring smooth flow of control from secondary database

to repaired primary. The Sanovi solution also ensures that data protection will resume

smoothly after fallback by re-enabling forward direction replication.

Tracking and Reporting Application DR Readiness

It is important that organizations keep track of the execution and event history of DRoperations. This help in the following:Ø Improving recovery time windowsØ Meet auditory compliance needs


©2011 Sanovi 4



Ø Increase operational efficiencyØ Provide visibility and transparency into the DR operationsØ Executive level reporting to continue to have the management buy-in

Sanovi reporting module tracks detailed execution history of various DR events including:

Ø RPO deviations from business configured valueØ Replication throughput and outages with trendsØ Summary and step-wise break down of DR DrillsØ Summary and step-wise break down of failover operationsØ Application summary report on its DR readiness including RPO snapshot, status of the

last DR Drill and number of critical events that have occurred on this application

This information is presented through graphical and tabular reports that can be exported

into other commonly useful formats.

Representing Application Interdependency

It is often that the business depends on more than one IT application to be available. As an

example, the internet banking application is dependent on the core banking application to

be available and running. If the core banking application on the primary fails, then the

secondary site core banking application will take over. At this time, the Internet banking

application also needs to failover to the secondary site. The ability to represent these kindsof application interdependency is supported in Sanovi using a hierarchy of recovery group

relationships and stored in its recovery dependency database.

How Sanovi Software Works

Sanovi DRM software is a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Framework providing a web-

based console and easy-to-use wizard-based setup and configuration. The software

interoperates with leading vendor applications, replication products and server, storage

and network environments.

Sanovi software overlays all the dependent components on top of the existing DR systems

and monitors, both physical and virtual, for recovery readiness. It understands DR solution

signatures based on the best industry practices and provides pre-built monitoring,

validation and automation steps for recovery and testing enterprise applications. High

level steps and the resulting capabilities are elaborated below:1. Sanovi software and its services modules are installed in customer environment.2. By configuring the application dependency information into the software, Sanovi


©2011 Sanovi 5



software modules monitor and validate the recovery readiness and report DR solution

health, RPO and Datalag in real time for each application.

3. Sanovi's DR aware recovery workflow manager is used to automate DR Drills and

Failover steps. Its pre-built Recovery Automation Library enables fast deployment. After

automation of the recovery steps, these procedures can be executed through a click of abutton. The software keeps track of the execution history and provides them through

reporting modules.

4. For new DR deployment, its pre-built DR Solution Signatures based on best practice

provide fully automated DR capability out-of-box for all supported applications. The

operational steps required for a successful failover, such as splitting the SRDF pair on the

secondary and starting Oracle in recovery mode, are encapsulated in Sanovi software and

presented to the user in easily accessible templates. This enables error free and predictable

disaster recovery of critical applications.

5. The reports module offers graphical and tabular information on compliance and

deviation of application to various recovery metric. Detailed analysis of workflow execution

with the time taken and comparison with previous runs is provided.

Summary

Sanovi DRM is a leading software solution that provides real time visibility, control and

automation of disaster recovery processes and ensures readiness of all applications at the

DR site. With Sanovi, customers gain visibility into complex replication environments. With

deep integration to leading application, replication, server, storage and network

technologies, Sanovi automates advanced disaster recovery operations, providing assured

recovery and increased operational efficiency. Customers are able to reduce risk, tame

complexity and drive down costs while increasing their application's recovery readiness.

About SanoviSanovi helps organizations across the globe pro actively manage Disaster Recovery (DR)

environments and ensure business managers that applications can be recovered in

compliance with service level agreements. Sanovi DRM, is a comprehensive family of

enterprise-class DR management software solution for validating, monitoring, testing and

automating recovery. For more information visit www.sanovi.com


©2011 Sanovi 6

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