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Hystax Acura Disaster Recovery step-by-step guide

To perform Disaster Recovery you need to complete the following steps:

Protection flow

Login to the Hystax Acura Control Panel deployed as a part of the solution (refer to https://hystax.com/resources/ for more information on deployment instructions) and navigate to the customer dashboard for a customer you target to perform Disaster Recovery.

2. On a customer dashboard you can find information about protected machines, DR Plans, and failovers running. By default, no resources are available for a new customer.

3. Click on the ‘Download agents’ button in the main menu, select a customer for which machines need to be replicated and download a replication agent.

There are three types of replication agents:

VMware agent – an external agent to replicate VMware virtual machines without installing any software directly on VMs. Please refer that the agent requires access to VMware CBT API and network access to vCenter or ESXi host is mandatory. Note that the agent from the same ova template must be deployed to all ESXi hosts where machines need to be protected. Please refer to http://docs.hystax.com/devices_protection.html#install-vmware-agents.
Windows agent – an internal agent, which can be deployed to any number of customer Windows virtual or physical machines. Please refer to http://docs.hystax.com/devices_protection.html#install-windows-and-linux-agents and Operating Systems compatibility matrix available at https://hystax.com/resources/.
Linux agent – an internal agent, which can be deployed to any number of customer Linux virtual or physical machines. Please refer to http://docs.hystax.com/devices_protection.html#install-windows-and-linux-agents and Operating Systems Compatibility Matrix available at https://hystax.com/resources/.

4. When any of the agents are deployed, the machine with it (or all machines on the same ESXi host where the agent is located) will appear in Hystax Acura Control Panel under the customer dashboard in the Unprotected state.

5. To start replication of machines, select the machines and click ‘Start Protection’ under ‘Bulk actions’ or for any of the machines specifically. After ‘Start Protection’ is performed, machines will be replicated to a target cloud, first, Hystax Acura takes a full replica and, later, incremental replicas according to a schedule set globally for all the machines or for any group of machines or for any machines specifically.

6. To change replication schedule (RPO) and retention settings, navigate to Replication schedule or Retention settings under machine settings or Bulk actions. Refer to http://docs.hystax.com/dr_overview.html#edit-replication-schedule for more information on configuring the settings.

Recovery flow

7. Recovery is based on Disaster Recovery Plans, which are scenarios of what needs to be recovered and in what order in case of failover. Refer to http://docs.hystax.com/dr_overview.html#disaster-recovery-plans for more information about Disaster Recovery Plans.

To create a DR Plan, click Add on DR Plans region.

8. While creating a DR Plan, orchestration is available under Basic and Expert modes. Basic mode helps to generate a plan with standard settings, expert mode is a JSON script with more powerful settings described under http://docs.hystax.com/dr_overview.html#dr-plan-syntax.

9. Add all the machines that need to be recreated, place them into ranks, and set correct IP addresses, networks, and boot delays.

10. When the DR Plan is ready, you can run test or production failovers. To run a failover, select a DR Plan and click Run Recover.

11. On a third step select a restore point for the failover by selecting Restore point time. For all of the machines selected the closest snapshot in the past will be taken. Click Run Recover to start failover.

12. When a failover is running you can see and control its status on the Cloud Site page available via the customer dashboard.

13. Image download option is available for any specific machine. Open it by clicking on the Download machine image and selecting a restore point. After generating links, image disk links are available to be downloaded.

Failback flow

14. Failback to VMware is available for running failovers. Navigate to failback flow via the Failback menu item. Refer to http://docs.hystax.com/dr_overview.html#failback-to-production for more information on Failback flow.

For any questions, refer to http://docs.hystax.com/index.html or contact the Hystax support team at [email protected].

To optimize cloud costs and enhance IT infrastructure transparency with OptScale – a FinOps and multi-cloud cost management solution, contact us today.