EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis · EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis ... EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication ... replication facilities

EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis

A Detailed Review

Abstract

This white paper describes the environments supported by EMC® Data Protection Advisor (DPA) and within those environments, the various replication gaps that DPA will identify, monitor, alert, and report. The paper will explore several of the basic replication views/reports within DPA.

May 2010

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” EMC CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com

All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

Part Number h6952.1

EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis A Detailed Review 2

Table of Contents Executive summary ............................................................................................4 Introduction.........................................................................................................4

Audience ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Replication analysis support .............................................................................5 Replication analysis scenarios..........................................................................6 Replication analysis and the DPA GUI..............................................................8

Replication analysis reports ......................................................................................................... 8 Exposures Summary ................................................................................................................ 8 Detailed Exposures .................................................................................................................. 9 Unprotected Nodes .................................................................................................................. 9 Obsolete Recovery Points...................................................................................................... 10 Replication Process View....................................................................................................... 10 Server to Storage Configuration............................................................................................. 12 Server to Storage Topology ................................................................................................... 12 Exclude Details....................................................................................................................... 13

SLM Workspace......................................................................................................................... 14 Conclusion ........................................................................................................15 References ........................................................................................................15


Executive summary Businesses invest heavily in a range of data protection technologies to enable recovery under various failure and disaster scenarios. The goal of these technologies is to recover applications within specific time and data loss objectives. However, IT management and application owners have little visibility as to the ability of their data protection investments to recover their applications when needed. Therefore, they are often uncertain about their ability to meet the recovery objectives of the business.

Moreover, identifying and resolving recovery risks through testing and consulting is an error-prone and resource-intensive process. Overloaded staff and a skills shortage are putting the strategic goal of ensuring business continuity at risk. Furthermore, continuous access to critical information is now targeted by regulatory compliance audits, increasing pressure to provide positive proof of the ability to recover data.

Enterprises have to resort to manual and expensive methods such as custom scripting, infrequent disaster recovery testing, and external assessments to obtain an indication of their recoverability. Automating the process of analyzing application recoverability across data protection technologies dramatically reduces recovery failure risk, saves time and effort, and provides proof for auditors.

EMC® Data Protection Advisor (DPA) collects, monitors, analyzes, and reports on information from our customers’ entire data protection infrastructure, providing a unified data protection management window across their entire backup and EMC replication investment — accelerating access to information, saving time and money, allowing faster decisions, and improving data protection. DPA replication analysis support looks at array-level replication, from the application down to the LUN, highlighting misconfiguration and data protection exposures.

Support is provided for:

• Symmetrix® o TimeFinder®/Mirror, TimeFinder/Clone, and TimeFinder/Snap

o SRDF®/S, SRDF/A, Concurrent and Cascading SRDF

o RecoverPoint CDP, CRR, and CLR

• CLARiiON® o MirrorView™/A, MirrorView/S, SnapView™, and SAN Copy™

o RecoverPoint CDP, CRR, and CLR

• Applications o Oracle, SQL Server, Exchange, filesystems

Automated analysis highlights issues in providing replication gaps and the ability to meet recovery service level agreements (SLA) or internal governance.

Introduction This white paper describes the environments supported by Data Protection Advisor (DPA) and within those environments, the various replication gaps that DPA will identify, monitor, alert, and report. The paper will explore several of the basic replication views/reports within DPA.

Audience This white paper is intended for operations and midlevel management responsible for protecting and recovering business-critical application and filesystem data. It outlines how DPA can identify replication gaps that will inhibit successful recovery of their data, saving time and resources.


Replication analysis support The replication analysis software available in DPA version 5.5 installs and runs on a Windows server within the environment. Although the DPA server software is only supported on the Windows operating system at this time, it can monitor, analyze, and report on Windows and UNIX environments.

The requirements for performing recoverability analysis on EMC Symmetrix, CLARiiON, or EMC Ionix™ ControlCenter® are listed in the table below:

Table 1. Replication analysis requirements

Storage platforms Supported host operating systems

Supported software

Supported replication facilities

EMC Symmetrix Windows 32-bit, AIX 32-bit, Linux 32-bit, Solaris 64-bit, HP-UX 64-bit,

Solutions Enabler versions 6.4, 6.5, 7.0, 7.1a

TimeFinder/Mirror, TimeFinder/Clone, TimeFinder/Snap; SRDF/S, SRDF/A, Concurrent SRDF, Cascading SRDF; RecoverPoint CDP, CRR, and CLR

EMC CLARiiON Windows 32-bit, AIX 32-bit, Linux 32-bit, Solaris 64-bit, HP-UX 64-bit

Solutions Enabler version 7.0.0.0

MirrorView/A and MirrorView/S; SnapView; SAN Copy; RecoverPoint CDP, CRR, and CLR

EMC Ionix ControlCenter Windows ControlCenter versions 5.2, 6.0

N/A

a. Enginuity 5568 or later is required in order to display RDF recovery points. Consistent split action must be performed with Solutions Enabler 6.4 or later.


To perform replication analysis for clients, the requirements are as follows:

Table 2. Replication analysis requirements for clients

Host operating systemsa Supported applications

- Microsoft Windows 32-bit, 64-bit (x86/x64) - Windows 2003, 2008

- Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007- SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008 - Oracle 8.1.x, 9.x, 10g, 11g

- Sun Solaris 8, 9, 10b

- HP-UX 11iv1m, 11iv2, 11iv3 (PA-RISC, IA64) - Linux 32-bit, 64-bit (x86/x64) - Red Hat 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 (AS/ES) - Linux 32-bit, 64-bit (x86.x64) - SUSE 9, 10 - AIX 5.2, 5.3, 6.1

- Oracle 8.1.x, 9.x, 10g, 11g

a. Raw devices on Windows hosts are not supported. Raw devices are supported on Linux/Solaris only when residing on a volume group. ASM is not supported. b. Sun clustering is not supported.

Replication analysis scenarios The following figures illustrate some sample replication analysis scenarios.

Figure 1. Application component not protected In this example, Tablespace 2 was added to the application server and resides on the local array. All other components are being replicated to the remote array except Tablespace 2. So this would be identified by DPA as a gap as this component is not being protected consistently.


Figure 2. Various device issues

Figure 2 displays several types of device issues from the storage view that can occur in a replicated environment such as a missing replica, an inconsistent replication type, and different split times, as well as a hardware failure. In most cases, change in the environment causes issues with recovering replicated data.


Figure 3. Various application or file system issues

Figure 3 displays application or file system issues that DPA will find, such as missing or incomplete data, inconsistent copies, inconsistent status, and different types of replica types.

Replication analysis and the DPA GUI Data Protection Advisor replication analysis is available in two forms: DPA reports available from the reporting menu, and the Service Level Management (SLM) Workspace, which is a GUI workspace that shows a graphical representation of recovery points and gaps in the data protection environment.

To view recoverability reports, right-click on the host or subnode in the Navigation tree. If the appropriate data gathering requests have been assigned to the node, the recoverability reports are available from the reporting menu under Recoverability. To open the SLM Workspace, select Tools > SLM Workspace from the menu.

Replication analysis reports Data Protection Advisor provides the ability to create customized reports on a scheduled or ad-hoc basis. You can define reports based on the intended audience. For example, you can define detailed reports for operators managing storage and day-to-day replications or summary reports for senior-level managers who need to view the business at a high level. You can also export reports in a variety of formats, such as the following.

Exposures Summary The Exposures Summary report displays the gaps in recoverability by facility for managed replication objects in the environment. To run the report, select Recoverability > Exposures Summary from the Navigation tree.


Figure 4. Exposures Summary

Detailed Exposures The Detailed Exposures report provides details on each gap, including recoverability path, storage engine, and replication facility. To run the report, select Recoverability > Exposure Details from the Navigation tree.

Figure 5. Detailed Exposures

Unprotected Nodes The Unprotected Nodes report displays all of the objects that are not fully recoverable. To run the report, select Recoverability > Unprotected Nodes from the Navigation tree.


Figure 6. Unprotected Nodes

Obsolete Recovery Points The Obsolete Recovery Points report shows the recovery points that have been rendered out of date by changes in the source. To view the report, select Recoverability > Obsolete Recovery Points from the Navigation tree.

Replication Process View The Replication Process View report displays a visualization of the recoverability of one or more replication objects. The Process View is the same as that viewed in the Service Level Management Workspace. To view the recoverability visualization, select Recoverability > Replication Process View from the Navigation tree.


Figure 7. Visualization


Server to Storage Configuration The Server to Storage Configuration report shows the disk, volume, and engine (storage array) mappings for servers. To view the server to storage mappings, select Recoverability > Server to Storage Configuration from the Navigation tree.

Figure 8. Server to Storage Mappings Tabular

Server to Storage Topology The Server to Storage Topology shows the mapping of filesystems to images. To view the server to storage mappings, select Recoverability > Server to Storage Topology from the Navigation tree.


Figure 9. Server to Storage Mappings Topology

Exclude Details The Exclude Details report shows the gaps that have been excluded from recoverability reporting by the client. To view the server to the Exclude Details report, select Recoverability > Exclusion Details from the Navigation tree.

Figure 10. Exclude Details


SLM Workspace The SLM Workspace allows you to view the details, status, and mapping of all of the primary storage nodes and replicas in the environment. Unlike the reports and Control Panels that you can run in the report display window, the SLM Workspace cannot be scheduled, exported, or saved in any format.

The SLM Workspace is shown in the following figure.

Figure 11. SLM Workspace

The areas of the SLM Workspace are:

• Service tree — The Service Tree mirrors the DPA Navigation tree. It lists all of the servers, applications, and storage devices configured in DPA. Replication analysis can be performed on nodes in the Service Tree that have been configured in DPA to gather recoverability data. Icons and color coding in the service tree indicate at a glance whether a node has any recoverability gaps.

• Process view —The Process view displays the graphical representation of how the node selected in the Service Tree is replicated throughout the environment. Each logical unit or filespace is mapped from its primary storage to all local and remote replicas, along with the method of replication.

• Details view —The Details view provides more detailed information on the object selected in the Process view. The Details view displays information on: Gaps — The Gaps tab contains a sortable list of all the recoverability gaps and exposures found for

a particular recovery point. Storage Mapping — The Storage Mapping tab contains a list of the storage volumes that

participated in creating the selected recovery points.


Conclusion Data Protection Advisor analysis of application and replication operations provides the following:

• Identification of replication gaps that affect recovery • Remote and local consistency • Analysis of replication from the application to the LUN level

Data Protection Advisor is easy to deploy and use. It includes:

• Quick install and deployment • Automated operation

Data Protection Advisor provides visualization of replication operations, such as the following:

• It renders from the application perspective • Replication timeline, data flow, and topology views • GUI and reports

References The following Data Protection Advisor documents can be found on Powerlink®:

• EMC Data Protection Advisor Architecture Overview • EMC Data Protection Advisor Compatibility Matrix • EMC Data Protection Advisor Installation Guide • EMC Data Protection Advisor Administration Guide • EMC Data Protection Advisor Reference Guide • EMC Data Protection Advisor Release Notes • EMC Data Protection Advisor User Guide


EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis · EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication Analysis ... EMC Data Protection Advisor for Replication ... replication facilities

Documents