Disaster Recovery

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Disaster Recovery

• Sudath Wijeratne 15-Sep-06

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Agenda

• Background
• Methodology
• Our DR Strategy
• Learning Management system (Blackboard) DR
  implementation
• Discussions

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Background

• Griffith has 5 campus locations from Brisbane's
  Southbank to the Gold Coast
• Servers have been installed local to campus
• Nathan centric corporate systems and servers

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Background

• The University AUQA audit in 2003 identified risk
  management as a priority, and the impact of
  failure of electronic infrastructure was
  identified as a risk requiring mitigation. A loss
  of the core Nathan Data Centre has the potential
  to cripple the Universitys ability to deliver
  its core services.
• Achieving sufficient involvement and sponsorship
  from core business units to undertake a
  traditional top down Business Impact Statement
  (BIA) approach to disaster recovery has proven
  difficult over the last few years.

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Background

• In absence of BCP plan/strategy, ICTS management
  team commissioned a disaster recovery project to
  jumpstart the process via a bottom up approach
  for three critical University systems
• Learning_at_Griffith
• Staff Email
• Corporate Web Services

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Methodology

• Dozens Of Systems
• Hundreds of IT Components (building blocks)
• How they relate to each other and what is a real
  impact of failure of any particular building
  block?
• We needed a process / methodology to guide us to
  approach DR system by system

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Methodology

• We have developed a methodology called Building
  Block
• Methodology is about
• Systems / Services
• Architectural components
• And their dependencies

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Methodology
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Building Block methodology

• Top down approach is to analyse IT services
  iteratively decomposing them into key
  technological components and dependencies.
• As a result of this process the key building
  blocks required to deliver the service are
  identified.
• Recovery solutions for each building block are
  then undertaken.
• A second round of analysis identified common
  building blocks that are reusable for other
  systems, or as base components for holistic
  disaster recovery (e.g. DNS services, LDAP).

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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
Apps Servers (S1-APS-SRV)
Storage Services (S1-APS-SS)
DNS01
LBS (S1-APS-NW)
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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
Apps Servers (S1-APS-SRV)
Storage Services (S1-APS-SS)
DNS01
LDAP servers (S1-AUS-SVR)
LBS (S1-APS-NW)
LBS (S1-AUS-NW)
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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
Apps Servers (S1-APS-SRV)
Storage Services (S1-APS-SS)
DNS01
LDAP servers (S1-AUS-SVR)
LBS (S1-APS-NW)
Database Server (S1-DBS-SVR)
Storage Service (S1-DBS-SS)
LBS (S1-AUS-NW)
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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
Apps Servers (S1-APS-SRV)
Storage Services (S1-APS-SS)
DNS01
LDAP servers (S1-AUS-SVR)
LBS (S1-APS-NW)
Database Server (S1-DBS-SVR)
Storage Service (S1-DBS-SS)
LBS (S1-AUS-NW)
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Understanding Environment Interdependencies
System-1 (S1)
Web/Apps Services (S1-APS)
Database Services (S1-DBS)
Authentication (S1-AUS)
Network Services (S1-NW)
Apps Servers (S1-APS-SRV)
Storage Services (S1-APS-SS)
DNS01
LDAP servers (S1-AUS-SVR)
LBS (S1-APS-NW)
Database Server (S1-DBS-SVR)
Storage Service (S1-DBS-SS)
LBS (S1-AUS-NW)
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Methodology application to Backboard
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Methodology Summary for Blackboard
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Fact sheets
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Our DR Strategy is based around

• Two physically separated primary Data Centres
• Distributed operation of major systems between
  these Campuses
• Near real-time data replication capabilities
  between these Data Centres

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Key Dependencies for DR Project

• SAN Infrastructure provisioning at Gold Coast
  campus
• Network server campus virtualisation (Between
  Nathan and Gold Coast)

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SAN Infrastructure design

• Tiered storage capabilities
• Provide inter campus (Inter SAN) copy (TRUE Copy)
  and snapshot (Shadow Image) capabilities
• Tier to tier copy capabilities
• Central management of storage
• Allow for DR implementation using above
  capabilities

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Virtual server campus network design
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Virtual server campus network design

• Provide equal access to servers from anywhere
• Well defined access points into the server
  subnets
• Greater server to server connectivity
• Allow for DR planning by allowing a shared layer
  2 between sites
• Easy to migrate servers and services between sites

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Learning_at_Griffith Distributed DR Architecture
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DR Plans

• DR Management Framework
• DR Plans for each building block
• Resumption plans

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Lesions learnt

• Resource issues and priorities with multiple
  projects
• Distributed environment
• Benefits and challenges
• Resources at 2nd primary site
• External audit ? University Audit committees
• BCP awareness

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Discussions