Disaster recovery with SnapManager

You can use SnapManager to prepare for disasters, to perform failover and failback operations, and to restore Exchange databases that have been destroyed or compromised. SnapManager provides an exclusive Business Management Console to define a Business Continuance plan and execute that plan to recover Exchange data.

You can use a Business Continuance plan for routine maintenance purposes. When your production site is down, the SnapManager Business Management Console enables you to move the application Server and its data to the Business Continuance site automatically.

• Where to get information when disaster strikes
  As part of your disaster-recovery preparation, ensure that you have access to reference material about how to use LUNs, about how to administer Data ONTAP, data replication by using SnapMirror, about disaster preparedness and recovery for Microsoft Exchange server, and so on.
• Preparations for disaster recovery
  To prepare for a catastrophic failure, keep the storage system that stores the destination SnapMirror volumes in a different physical location than your primary production system. Keep the archiving media offsite.
• Backing up your Windows environment
  SnapManager, Exchange server, and storage systems are dependent on the Windows environment. Before you can use any of the SnapManager processes, it is important that you back up your Windows environment so that you can restore the same state as part of the recovery process.
• Replication of your Exchange server environment
  A typical Exchange site replication copies the Windows environment (Active Directory, Domain Controller and so on) through the Wide Area Network (WAN) to another site. The Exchange Data on the storage system is copied to the other site using SnapMirror.
• Methods of moving Exchange data offsite
  You need to move your data offsite for disaster recovery. You can use SnapMirror to mirror your storage system data to a storage system in another location. You can also archive the data to physical media such as tapes and store that media off-site.
• Prerequisites for creating a Business Continuance plan
  Before you create a Business Continuance plan for your clustered configuration, or on a stand-alone server, ensure that you have necessary software installed, drive letters or mountpoints available, and correct cluster configuration on the production and the Business Continuance site.
• Setting permissions for business continuance on Microsoft Windows 2008R2
  When running cluster services under the local system account on Windows 2008R2, you must add the cluster management name to the permissions on the computer object and DNS record for the CMS.
• Impact of Active Directory replication lag on Business Continuance
  If the Active Directory replication lag is more than the threshold value, the re-creation of the Exchange instance can fail at the Business Continuance site.
• Creating a Business Continuance plan
  When you create a Business Continuance plan for recovering Exchange data, you can create it at a local or remote location. The plan specifies resources and other information that will be needed for recovery after a disaster occurs.
• Validating the Business Continuance plan
  You can validate the Business Continuance plan at any time; however, you should validate it at fixed intervals, especially before starting the failover process. This ensures that correct resources and server configuration get involved in the recovery operation.
• Prerequisites for failing over to the Business Continuance site
  For a planned failover to a Business Continuance server, ensure that you have a valid disaster recovery plan, perform backup of all Storage Groups, and ensure that the Exchange server is offline at the production site.
• Executing the Business Continuance plan
  You can perform the following tasks as part of the Business Continuance plan—Business Continuance server validation, cleanup of Business Continuance destination, take Exchange instances offline, quiesce and break SnapMirror relationships, reconnect Exchange LUNs, Exchange instance re-creation, and restore backups.
• Prerequisites for failing back from the Business Continuance site
  Before you start a planned failback operation from the Business Continuance site, execute the Business Continuance plan cleanup task, start reverse resynchronization from the destination to the source storage system, and flush the local DNS cache.
• Failing back to the production site
  You can perform a failback using a disaster recovery plan only if the destination volumes are resynchronized in the reverse direction to the original production storage resources. You can also create a new disaster recovery plan to fail over the Exchange storage resources to the production site.
• Managing SnapMirror replication
  You can manage the SnapMirror replication of Exchange volumes across production site and Business Continuance site by using the Replication Management Console.
• Troubleshooting disaster recovery
  You can use the following guidelines to troubleshoot disaster recovery.