HP Insight Recovery 1.0 Online Help (Document Format)

2 Overview
Overview
HP Insight Recovery (HPIR) provides disaster recovery protection for logical servers configured and managed
by Insight Dynamics - Virtual Server Environment (ID-VSE). Logical servers that are managed by HP Insight
Recovery are referred to as Disaster Recovery Protected ( DR Protected ) logical servers. Each DR Protected
logical server is configured to run on an HP Proliant Server – either a C-class Blade equipped with HP Virtual
Connect, or on a virtual machine under the control of a VMware ESX Server.
An HP Insight Recovery configuration consists of two sites, each running Insight Dynamics -- VSE and HP
Insight Recovery. At any point in time, one site is configured with the “Primary” role and the other is configured
with the “Recovery” role. HP Insight Recovery pairs symmetrically configured logical servers across the two
sites. The DR Protected logical servers at the Primary site are in an activated state, providing services to the
end-user. The peer logical servers at the Recovery site are in a deactivated state. At the Primary site, the
boot images of the DR Protected logical servers, including applications code and data, reside on HP
StorageWorks EVA array volumes. The Primary site volumes are replicated on an HP StorageWorks EVA
array at the Recovery site. The Primary and Recovery site arrays are synchronized with Continuous Access
EVA. Each replicated Recovery site volume is associated with a DR Protected peer logical server at the
Recovery site.
If a disaster occurs at the Primary site, the administrator at the Recovery site can trigger a site failover via a
push-button provided by HP Insight Recovery. This will prepare the storage associated with the DR Protected
logical servers at the Recovery site for read-write access, and then activate the logical servers at the Recovery
site. The role at the Recovery site will be changed to Primary.
Some Benefits of HP Insight Recovery
• Provides a disaster recovery solution for “logical servers”, a concept introduced by Insight Dynamics
– Virtual Server Environment (ID-VSE).
• Provides an automated disaster recovery mechanism, with a single push-button triggering both storage
and server failover for DR Protected logical servers.
• Extends the Insight Dynamics -- VSE value of a common management interface to the realm of disaster
recovery, for logical servers running on physical or virtual servers.
• Supports HP StorageWorks EVA storage, and Continuous Access EVA storage replication in synchronous
mode.
Some Limitations of HP Insight Recovery Version 1.0
• The configuration of HP Insight Recovery at two separate sites is not automatically synchronized, however
HP Insight Recovery provides tools that simplify this task.
• All of the DR Protected logical servers at a site are failed over – it is not possible to select an individual
logical server, or a subset of DR Protected logical servers at a site to failover.
• The maximum distance between the Primary and Recovery site is restricted to metropolitan (“metro”)
area distances. This is related to Fiber Channel SAN design restrictions needed to support synchronous
replication in Continuous Access EVA.
• HP BladeSystem blades must have compatible hardware configurations across the Primary and Recovery
Sites. The compatible hardware requirements are the same as for Insight Dynamics -- VSE and are
documented in the HP Virtualization Manager Version 4.0 Getting Started Guide, found at:
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/vse.html
The HP Insight Recovery Configuration Process
The following graphic illustrates the three-step HP Insight Recovery configuration process, which must be
done at both the Primary and Recovery Site(s).
Overview 11