SecondSite Technology Whitepaper DR Technology White Paper

Revised 6 April 2016

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Contents

1. Background 3

1.1 Our Perspective on Disaster Recovery 3

1.2 What is SecondSite? 3

1.3 What SecondSite is not 4

2. SecondSite Components 5

2.1 What are the components of SecondSite? 5

3. Disaster Recovery Events 6

3.1 Disaster has struck aka ‘Live’ Failover Event 6

3.2 Failback/Recovery 6

4. Commercials and Engagement 7

4.1 Pricing Structure 7

4.2 Network (Accessibility) 7

4.3 On Boarding 7

4.4 Software Upgrades 8

4.5 Failover Testing 8

4.6 Responsibilities 8

4.7 Software Licensing and DR 9

5. DR Concepts Compared 10

5.1 Recovery Site 10

5.2 Data Synchronization 10

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1.1 Our Perspective on Disaster Recovery

A key component of your overall Business Continuity Plan is ensuring that you can manage, maintain and recover access and usability of your mission critical IT applications and services in the event of a disaster.

In the most basic form this aspect of disaster recovery requires:

Recovery Site - an environment, logically and physically separate to production that can take over the operation of your mission critical IT applications in case of a disaster.

Data Synchronization – a way of keeping the recovery site environment up to date by way of real time replication of production systems and data.

Accessibility – ensuring your end users can access this environment in order to quickly resume normal operations.

Activation – a means of activating your DR environment when the unthinkable happens.

1.2 What is SecondSite?

Zettagrid SecondSite is a virtualised DR Service that provides recovery site, data synchronization, accessibility and activation for part or all of your production virtual environment.

SecondSite keeps your virtual environment synchronised to the Zettagrid cloud, enabling real time failover and failback of an environment with short Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).

SecondSite is a powerful component of an overall DR Strategy with the following key features:

Zero capital investment for provision of your Recovery Site. Cloud pricing model by way of a single monthly charge of $99 per VM with no lock in

contracts. Enables simple and automated full DR failovers. Allows for fully ring-fenced DR testing with full reporting. Software-defined and vendor agnostic (storage, network and compute). A VM based product (not reliant on snapshots) so you can pick and choose which VMs

need protection and only pay for what you need.

1. Background

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1.3 What SecondSite is not

SecondSite is not:

An all-encompassing DR or BC strategy or solution. A silver bullet that negates the need for comprehensive, well documented disaster

recovery plans, processes and procedures. A service that magically works for all use-cases and all applications.

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2.1 What are the components of SecondSite?

SecondSite is made up of four key components:

1. Second Virtual Data Centre (Recovery Site): A pool of reserved virtual resources housed within a Zettagrid Virtual Data Centre.

2. Virtual Replication Platform (Data Synchronization) A simple, high-performance, multi-tenant, award-winning, hypervisor-level replication platform.

3. Network Connectivity (Accessibility): Connectivity between your existing virtual environment and Zettagrid. Connectivity can range from a simple IPSEC VPN over existing internet resources to a dedicated 100Mbit – 10Gbit private fibre link. Connectivity can be supplied by Zettagrid if you want to take advantage of no traffic charges to our network.

4. Failover & Failback (Activation): a simplistic pre planned methodology, with technical assistance and support by Zettagrid.

2. SecondSite Components

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3.1 Disaster has struck aka ‘Live’ Failover Event

SecondSite keeps your data replicated and resources reserved, ready to go at a moment’s notice. But what happens when a DR event actually occurs?

SecondSite allows you to trigger or activate a failover via either your local vSphere/Hyper-V management environment, your dedicated SecondSite portal or with assistance from the Zettagrid Support Team. It is important to ensure that your plan includes how your employees will continue to access services and the implication of firewalling and IP address routing.

Note that the failover event results in Zettagrid becoming your production site, replication from your premises ceases until you are ready to failback.

3.2 Failback/Recovery

Once your primary site is back up and running, replication can be reversed automatically from Zettagrid back to your own site. You may then initiate ‘failback’ at your convenience from either your dedicated SecondSite portal or your own on premise vSphere/Hyper-V management environment.

This failback process should be part of your DR plan and we highly recommend that you co-ordinate this process with your managed services partner or the Zettagrid team.

You’ll be charged for the full resources used in Zettagrid for the period that you are using Zettagrid as your production site. A handy pricing calculator is available on our website to detail what these costs are. You will continue being charged the SecondSite costs of $99 per VM.

At this point you have the option of continuing to use Zettagrid as your production site long term and simply keep your own on premise equipment as your DR site.

3. Disaster Recovery Events

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4.1 Pricing Structure

This is our simplest product in terms of pricing, it costs $99 per VM per month.

It doesn’t matter if the VM has 2Gb or 128Gb of RAM.

It doesn’t matter if the VM has 40GB or 1TB of storage.

The product is designed for protecting real world VMs and as such has a fair use policy governing its usage. On average, your protected VMs need to be under 1TB per VM across all VMs. If the total storage of all protected VMs in terabytes is greater than the number of protected VMs then you require an additional license.

4.1.1 DR Tests

When performing a test the VMs you are protecting will actually run in Zettagrid and consume resources. For this we will charge a flat fee of $1000 per test and will allow you to test a maximum of 50 VMs for up to 24 hours.

4.1.2 DR Failovers

When failing over into Zettagrid and we become your production site we will continue to charge the $99 per VM and will also charge you for the resources utilised as per the normal pricing schedule. This amount can be determined via our handy pricing calculator available on the website.

4.2 Network (Accessibility)

During the engagement your Account Manager will work with you to determine the size of the network link required for the high-speed replication traffic between your local production site (primary) and your SecondSite in Zettagrid.

We have automated the deployment and setup of VMware’s advanced NSX Edge and also an IPSEC VPN for every SecondSite customer which will allow for connectivity over the internet. If it is determined that your current outbound internet is insufficient to guarantee the RPO your business requires then additional connectivity may be required.

The network and related IP addressing such as external DNS during a DR event is crucial for successful business continuity. Particular consideration needs to be taken on how your users and customers will continue to access your environment when primary access methods such as the corporate internet and local LAN are not available.

You will be responsible for the review and implementation of the appropriate network configuration, including firewalls to enable SecondSite replication and DR network access.

4.3 On Boarding

SecondSite requires some thought around the design, implement and testing of the solution to see if it best meets individual customer DR needs. We have automated the target setup and all the customer needs to do after purchase is the configuring of the on premise side by following our videos and FAQs.

If you require a new or dedicated link for the DR traffic then Zettagrid staff will assist with this and will deploy and connect the most appropriate link based on the information

4. Commercials and Engagement

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gathered using our WAN sizing tool.

4.4 Software Upgrades

The SecondSite software residing at your location will require software updates every 6-12 months. This ensures that the replication software is up-to-date and maintained within two major releases of the Zettagrid SecondSite software. The upgrade process will pause replication but is not disruptive to any production VMs and takes on average 10-20 minutes and should be co-ordinated with your typical change control process.

4.5 Failover Testing

With traditional DR platforms failover testing can be both expensive and disruptive with the result that it’s rarely performed and there is a significant risk of problems when an event occurs. SecondSite enables your organisation to fully test the infrastructure component of your DR plan.

Failover testing enables you to confirm that your environment is being replicated successfully and that your applications operate as they should. Your servers are activated in an isolated test environment without disruption to ongoing replication.

4.6 Responsibilities

SecondSite is not a full DR plan but will be a pivotal piece of your DR puzzle. You are expected to develop, provide and maintain your own DR plan.

We recommend that the SecondSite solution is implemented and maintained by staff with either VMware or Hyper-V experience. Where you do not have technical staff Zettagrid can recommend a certified IT integrator to manage this on your behalf. The following table describes the basic lines of responsibility.

Activity Responsible Party

Develop and Provide DR Plan You / Partner

Configure On-Premise Firewall to Terminate VPN You / Partner

Test Failover / Failback You / Partner

Monitor RPOs/RTOs You / Partner

Supply Automated Replication of VMs Zettagrid

Supply DR Environment Zettagrid

Provide Real-time Dashboard and Reports Zettagrid

Implement DR Failover You / Partner

On-Premise Application Upgrades You / Partner

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4.7 Software Licensing and DR

Ensuring that the applications running inside your VMs are correctly licensed in Zettagrid is just as important as for your production environment. There is no license requirement at all unless you actually fail over and run VMs in Zettagrid but it should be given thought in the unlikely event you may need to invoke your DR plan.

There are a variety of licensing models available to assist in your license management. For example Microsoft has a License Mobility option which under certain conditions allows you to bring your own license for certain server applications. Zettagrid also has available a range of software paid on a monthly basis.

Bring your own license enables you to utilise your existing licenses during a disaster.

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In this section, we’ll go through a few examples of how DR is typically achieved using traditional approaches. We’ll make things fair and only focus on what SecondSite addresses; Recovery Site and Data Sync.

5.1 Recovery Site

Traditionally, you would build another Data Centre, or lease some space for colocation, and then procure servers, storage, and networking equipment. You would also cater for future growth. A big chunk of your infrastructure will be sitting idle 99% of the time. Imagine how significant the cost savings would be, using Zettagrid SecondSite over this traditional approach.

5.2 Data Synchronization

This space is crowded with offerings from many vendors, however they typically boil down to one of the following approaches.

STORAGE-BASED REPLICATION This is ‘the benchmark’ mechanism that all others measure against. Storage based replication is generally either real-time, or close to it. It can achieve very short RPO’s and with the right software, good RTO’s also. But there are some trade-offs:

Complex software, with a premium price to match. Software licenses are often locked to a specific vendor. Source and destination SANs generally must be from the same vendor and are usually

expensive. Not typically granular to the VM level. Targeted at enterprise, so not usually ‘cloud friendly’.

SNAP-SHOT BASED, REPLICATION TECHNOLOGY. Hypervisor-level snapshots are a great technology when used as intended. The use case is primarily short-term test and rollback and also often as a backup mechanism. But as any seasoned virtualization admin can attest they are not without their faults.

When they’re not cleared in a timely manner, performance or availability of the production VM is impacted.

While a snapshot is being performed, other management tasks are usually locked out. When they do go wrong it can be catastrophic; filling of production data-stores, large

performance hits, phantom snaps causing an offline consolidation etc. When a snapshot is happening once a day or week per VM, for a backup, the risk is

usually an acceptable one, but when used for replication every 1-15mins all the issues are multiplied.

APPLICATION-LEVEL REPLICATION Several modern applications have built-in mechanisms for high availability or DR and have several advantages. The application is generally more aware of what is critical and what is not so they can be very efficient in the transport of data.

However, in a typical business where you may have tens or even hundreds of applications, and a different solution for each, the recovery plan quickly gets very complex and error-

5. DR Concepts Compared

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prone.

BACKUP / RESTORE Another alternative is to use backup software and just store your backups at remote site and then restore them when you have a DR event.

Now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. The RTO of such a system is generally measured in tens of hours or more and the RPO is as good as your backup schedule.

Some backup providers have innovated in this space and built platforms to ‘run off the backup archive’, dropping the RTO time drastically. However, the performance of doing so is usually not stellar.

At the end of the day, to get production-class performance, you need production class hardware. With this mechanism, that means bulk restoring your data to a new SAN and either waiting for that (long RTO), or running at diminished performance (run-off-archive) while that happens.

PERTH Level 6, 10 William Street Perth WA 6000

SYDNEY Level 36, Governor Phillip Tower 1 Farrer Place, Sydney, NSW 2000 Australia

E sales@zettagrid.com T 1300 597 656 F 1300 794 469

www.zettagrid.com