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Dated: 12-11-2024

Ch02 High Availability and Redundancy case Study

  • Mid-sized enterprise
  • 3000 total staff
  • 2000 IT users
  • 30 IT team
  • One DC, one secondary (regional) data center (warm site & backup site), and one DR site
  • 99.9 % uptime designed

It Setup

  • Oracle ERP system
  • Sharepoint portal for workflow automation
  • Head office in Karachi
  • Primary DC in Karachi (hosted with 3rd party)
  • DR site in Lahore (hosted with 3rd party)
  • Secondary DC in ISB

Primary Dc

  • Fully redundant (HA) design for network, systems, and storage
  • Cisco HA (active-standby)
  • Oracle cluster technology for servers and DBs (active-active)

Secondary Dc (ISB)

  • All network, systems, and storage backups maintained here (also mirrored in DR)
  • Regional servers (AD, file servers, etc)
  • Test & staging environment here (segregated from main DC)
  • Office working space

Dr Site

  • Bare minimum HA (as DR site) for network, systems, and storage
  • Mirror of all backups from secondary site maintained here
  • Office working space
  • Some additional computing capacity (minimum for unforeseen events)
  • All critical systems and devices maintained in active mode (hot) for immediate DR failover
  • Data maintained as per org RTO/RPO for immediate utility
  • Monthly DR testing/drill

Backup Strategy

  • Primary backup at secondary DR site
  • Mirror at DR site
  • For critical systems: monthly full backup, daily incremental backup
  • For critical network devices: weekly full backup; backups based on change