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Perforce High Availability and

Disaster Recovery Options

Outline

•  Introduction

•  Definitions

•  Volume Layout

•  HA and DR Ojectives

•  DR Features and Benefits

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Outline

•  DR and HA Configuration Recommendations

•  DR and HA Solutions

•  Configuration Summary

•  Automated Failover

Introduction

•  These are just outlines of some high availability and disaster recovery options.

•  General information on options that achieve varying levels of availability and disaster recovery.

•  This is not intended to replace a specific assessment of your environment.

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Definitions

•  Network Attached Storage – NAS

•  Storage Area Network – SAN

•  Single Point of Failure – SPOF

•  Disaster Recovery – DR

•  High Availability – HA

Definitions

•  Perforce Server Deployment Package – SDP

•  Replication – Copying all files needed to operate Perforce

•  Extreme Availability – Replication + real time Perforce journal replication.

•  Recovery Time Objective – RTO

•  Recovery Point Objective – RPO

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•  Metadata – DB files – RAID 1+0

•  Logs – Journal and log files – RAID 1+0

•  Depotdata – Versioned files, checkpoints, and all other files used on your server. – RAID 5/6

Volume Layout

•  Availability and Recovery objectives should come from a business impact analysis (BIA).

•  The BIA helps quantify risk levels and financial impact.

•  The outcome of the BIA defines the RPO and RTO.

HA and DR Objectives

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•  Daily Verification of checkpoints

•  Status notifications

•  Versioned file verification

•  Fast recovery from failures

•  Reduced downtime for checkpoints

DR Features and Benefits

•  Two machines minimum – Primary and DR

•  Identical Hardware

•  Identical configurations – OS, file system, etc.

•  A backup solution in addition to your DR site

DR and HA Configuration Recommendations

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Low Cost DR Only RTO: This solution does not provide HA and therefore does not mitigate the risk of downtime. It provides business continuity in the event of a disaster. RPO: Data modified since the last synchronization between the primary and DR servers.

Warm Standby with DR RTO: Generally low, can be less than 30 minutes if minimal data loss is acceptable by failing over to hot standby or DR system. RPO: Data modified since the last synchronization between the primary and DR servers.

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HA Only RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Barring the failure of your SAN or NAS, there is zero data loss. These storage solutions are designed to not lose your data. In the event of a disaster, your RPO is the amount of data modified since your last backup.

HA with low cost DR

RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Same as the HA solution except that your DR system can now bring the Perforce server process back on-line faster, and your RPO is as low as your replication frequency.

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HA with HA DR and low RPO RTO: Normally less than 15 minutes in the event of a failure. RPO: Normally zero for local failures, and under one hour for failover to the DR site. (Can be as little as 5 – 10 minutes.)

Extreme Availability (EA), EA DR and zero RPO RTO: Near zero RPO: zero

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Configuration Summary

Automated Failover of Perforce

•  Some customers with limited success •  Others have created data corruption •  Good to have a failover script •  But a human should launch that script after

problem analysis

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Automated Failover of Perforce

•  Extreme HA with transparent failover is very complex

•  EA efforts are best applied in environments where is zero downtime is an absolute requirement

•  Most SCM environments do not demand the costs or efforts to maintain an EA solution.