US 6,694,447 B1 · Apparatus and method for increasing application availability during a disaster fail-back

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and apparatus for increasing availability of an application during fail-back from a secondary site to a primary site following a failure at the primary site. The method includes copying data from active storage volumes to secondary storage volumes of the secondary site while the application runs on the secondary site and updates the active storage volumes. Once the secondary storage volumes of the secondary site are updated, the data is re-synchronized from the secondary storage volumes of the secondary site to the primary storage volumes of the primary site. The steps of copying the data and resynchronizing the data are repeated for data updated by the application, during the resynchronization, until a time required to complete the resynchronization step for the updated data is within an acceptable downtime for the application. Once this step is complete, the application is failed-back to the primary site by bringing up the application at the primary site.

Claims23

Dependent claims

A method for increasing application availability during fail-back from a secondary site to a primary site following a failure at the primary site, the method comprising:

copying data from active storage volumes to secondary storage volumes at the secondary site while the application runs on the secondary site and updates the active storage volumes;
re-synchronizing data from the secondary storage volumes of the secondary site to primary storage volumes of the primary site;
repeating the steps of copying and re-synchronizing for data updated by the application until a time required to complete re-synchronizing the updated data is within an acceptable downtime for the application;
and
failing-back to the primary site by bringing up the application at the primary site once the re-synchronization of the updated data is complete, such that availability of the of the application is increased.

2 more elements

An apparatus for increasing application availability during a disaster fail-back, the apparatus comprising:

a primary site configured to run an application including a primary storage volume that contains data processed by the application;
a secondary site including a secondary storage volume and a point-in-time storage volume, the secondary site configured to replicate the data contained in the primary storage volume to the secondary storage volume and generate a point-in-time image of data stored on the secondary storage volumes that is stored into the point-in-time storage volumes;
and
a fail-back procedure having a capability to fail-back from the secondary site to the primary site following a fail-over to the secondary site by bringing up the application at the primary site once data updated by the application while running at the secondary site is re-synchronized from the secondary storage volumes of the secondary site to the primary storage volumes of the primary site, thereby increasing application availability during disaster fail-back.

1 more element

A computer readable storage medium containing programmed instructions that direct a computer to perform method for increasing application availability during fail-back from secondary site to a primary site following a failure at the primary site, the method comprising:

moving data from active storage volumes to secondary storage volumes at the secondary site while the application runs on the secondary site and updates the active storage volumes;
re-synchronizing data from the secondary storage volumes of the secondary site to primary storage volumes of the primary site;
repeating the moving and the re-synchronizing instructions for data updated by the application until a time required to complete the re-synchronizing instruction for the updated data is within an acceptable downtime for the application;
and
failing-back to the primary site by bringing up the application at the primary site once the re-synchronization of the updated data is complete, such that availability of the of the application is increased.