SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux Multi-site Cluster

Advanced Linux Disaster Recovery Solution combines SteelEye LifeKeeper for Linux with SteelEye Data Replication

SteelEye Protection Suite for Multi-site Cluster is a member of the SteelEye family of IT reliability and business continuity solutions Data Replication-enabled clusters affords organizations the ability to expand beyond a single location or local data center.

This solution allows for HA deployments in support of business continuity plans that allow for configurations that span many miles, states, countries or continents if necessary. Historically, these configurations have not been able to leverage the consistency and robustness of the shared storage cluster.

Fully automated and integrated disaster recovery solution

The SteelEye Protection Suite for Multi-site Cluster addresses the complex nuances of wide-area clustering, including sophisticated, granular application, database, and infrastructure component monitoring, high-speed, block level data replication, and redirection of application connectivity, on top of a unique hybrid storage model, to provide a complete solution for disaster recovery protection of servers.

Integrated Application & Data Protection LifeKeeper performs continuous monitoring of applications, databases, servers, storage, and network infrastructure resources, while simultaneously synchronizing data changes between the primary production and target recovery environments.

Critical to the success of disaster recovery is the need to address potential data integrity issues between the production and recovery environments, and in particular the status of any databases and individual transactions at the time of disaster. LifeKeeper addresses this issue and ensures that the recovery environment is always in-sync with the production environment, regardless of distance or time of day.

Automated Detection, Flexible Recovery Upon detection of a fault condition, LifeKeeper provides the option of restarting or correcting the condition, or failing over one or more components to the recovery environment in the local cluster. Upon detection of a complete failure of the local cluster, failover to the remote site is initiated manually, using the “panic button” capability.

In a catastrophic disaster recovery scenario, such as a loss of the primary site, LifeKeeper will allow failover and bring into service, in sequence, each component of the production system, or systems, in the recovery environment. Upon full recovery, LifeKeeper continues to monitor the availability of the recovery environment and also the status of the former production environment. Should the latter come back “online” administrators can manually switch back to the production site at an opportune time. Prior to failback, LifeKeeper re-synchronizes the original production data with changes that were applied within the recovery environment.

Key technical features

Basic Features

Combines the efficiency of a classic shared storage cluster with reliable data replication to a disaster recovery site.
Provides all the features of SteelEye Data Replication to protect data in LifeKeeper shared storage clusters
Cascading failover across prioritized server nodes
Automatic replication redirection
Replication of file systems that are part of a standard shared storage cluster
Automatic handling of changing replication sources in the local cluster
Expensive Storage-Based Replication is not necessary
Block-level mirroring of volumes below the file system level for high performance
Synchronous and asynchronous replication of only changed data
Graphical interface enables user to configure/monitor mirrored volumes
Allows access to source data during mirror creation and re-sync
Enables simultaneous creation and re-sync of multiple mirrors
Integrated monitoring and detection of failure/communication loss
Reliably monitor critical resources across WAN
Switch over to remote site only in disastrous events
Choice of full automation or manually-activated “panic button”