Monitoring DR Readiness for Eyeglass Assisted Failover

In addition to the Assisted Failover functionality, Eyeglass also provides the following features to monitor your Access Zone DR Readiness:

Access Zone DR Readiness Validation.
Runbook Robot.

Access Zone DR Readiness Validation

The DR Dashboard Zone Readiness tab provides a per Access Zone summary of all the key networking, Kerberos SPN, SmartConnect connect subnet\pool information along with SyncIQ status and Configuration replication validations performed to assess readiness for failover by Access Zone. The status for each are combined to provide an overall DR Status. The Zone Readiness is updated every 15 minutes by default (See "igls cli commands" in the Eyeglass PowerScale Edition Administrative Guide to change this schedule) .

This information provides the best indicator of DR readiness for failover and allows administrators to check status on each component of failover, identify status, errors and correct them, in order to get each Access Zone configured and ready for failover.

By default the Failover Readiness job which populates this information is disabled. Instructions to enable this Job can be found here. Under Managing Eyeglass Jobs

If all of the Access Zone Requirements and Recommendations pass validation, the DR Dashboard status for the Access Zone is green indicating that the Access Zone is safe to failover.

If any of the Access Zone Requirements do NOT pass validation, the DR Dashboard status for the Access Zone is red indicating that the Access Zone is NOT ready to failover. In this state the DR Assistant will block you from starting the failover. Eyeglass will also issue a System Alarm for any of these conditions.

If any of the Access Zone Recommendations do NOT pass validation, the DR Dashboard status for the Access Zone is orange (Warning) indicating that the Access Zone can be failed over but there may be some additional manual steps required to complete the failover. In this state the DR Assistant will allow you to start the failover. Eyeglass will also issue a System Alarm for any of these conditions.

Additional information for Zone Readiness can be found in the Eyeglass Admin guide here.

IMPORTANT:

If you make a change to your environment, the following Eyeglass tasks must run before the Zone Readiness will be updated:

Configuration Replication.
Failover Readiness.

IMPORTANT:

Readiness is NOT assessed for the Access Zone in the Failed Over state. This means the DR Dashboard Readiness provides a status, or Readiness, from the current active cluster to the DR target cluster ONLY. The reverse direction “Fail back” status is not assessed until failover to the target cluster.

Runbook Robot (Automate DR Testing on a schedule)

Overview

Many organizations schedule DR tests during maintenance windows and weekends, only to find out that the DR procedures did not work, or documentation needed to be updated. The Eyeglass Run Book Robot feature automates DR run book procedures that would normally be scheduled in off peak hours, and avoids down time to validate DR procedures, providing Failover and Failback automation tests with reporting.

This level of automation provides a high level of confidence that your PowerScale storage is ready for failover with all of the key functions executed on a daily basis. In addition to automating failover and failback, Eyeglass operates as a cluster witness. Eyeglass uses Access Zone mount paths to mount storage on both source and destination clusters the same way the cluster users and machines mount storage externally.

Run Book Robot Failover Coverage

The following validations are all performed on a daily basis, and the DR dashboard updated along with any failures sent as critical events. This is the best indicator that your cluster is ready for a failover.

API access to both clusters is functioning - Validated.
API access allows creation of export, share, quota - Validated.
NFS mount of data external to the cluster functions - Validated.
DNS resolution for SmartConnect is checked when Eyeglass configures itself to use SmartConnect service IP as its DNS resolver on the source, in order to verify SmartConnect zone functionality on mount of data requests - Validated.
SyncIQ policy replication completes between source and destination cluster when data is written to the source - Validated.
Configuration replication of test configuration from source to destination - Validated.
SyncIQ failover to target cluster - Validated.
Test data access on target cluster post failover - Validated.
Verify data integrity of the test data on target cluster - Validated.
Configuration Sync of quotas from source to target on failover - Validated.
Delete Quotas on source cluster - Validated.
SyncIQ Failback from target to source cluster - Validated.

Refer to the Eyeglass “RunBookRobot Admin Guide” for instructions on setting up and running the Runbook Robot.