How the SafeKit software can simplify and reduce costs of a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan (BCP DRP)
A Business Continuity Plan needs to use network load balancing boxes for scalability of Web services, shared disks to recover data, and failover toolkits delivered in Enterprise editions of Operating Systems and databases. The Disaster Recovery Plan makes the solution more complex and increases the cost by requiring disk bays replicated across a SAN between two geographically remote sites. SafeKit offers all these features in a single software and implements network load balancing, real-time replication and automatic failover.
Cut integration and validation costs in your BCP DRP projects
As the SafeKit solution is purely software, you can implement a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan for a critical application with simply 2 machines (physical or virtual) put in two remote sites. No need to invest in expensive storage complex to install and to configure in 2 sites. It is a way to drastically reduce integration and validation costs of your BCP DRP project.
With SafeKit, there is no change in configuration between 2 machines running on the same site or 2 machines running in two remote sites. The two sites must remain in the same extended LAN or VLAN for the transparent failover of the virtual IP address and for network performances of the synchronous real-time replication.
To avoid 2 masters when machines are network isolated (quorum problem), SafeKit proposes a simple split brain checker configured on a router while other clustering solutions require a complex configuration with a third machine, a special quorum disk or a special interconnect.
Content of webinar "Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan (BCP DRP) with a simple piece software" (webinar pdf ppt)
The cost cutting of a SafeKit solution compared to hardware solutions in a BCP DRP is described. You will see that a SafeKit solution is ideal for small load balancing Web farms (typically 4 servers) and replication of medium-sized data (typically a few Terabytes).
The top 3 SafeKit use cases are described and in particular the unusual use case related to the purely software product property: a software publisher adds a high availability software option to its catalog with SafeKit and then deploys N times its solution to its own customers without difficulty.
The integration of a critical application is presented with the 3 phases of design, integration / validation and deployment.
Through this webinar, you can evaluate the simplicity of setting up a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan (BCP DRP) with SafeKit.
Pdf and ppt versions of the webinar "Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan (BCP DRP) with a simple piece of software"
Harmonic is using SafeKit as a software OEM high availability solution and deploys it with its TV broadcasting solutions over satellites, terrestrials, cable, IPTV. Over 80 SafeKit clusters are deployed on Windows for replication of Harmonic database and automatic failover of the critical application. Philippe Vidal, Product Manager, Harmonic says: “SafeKit is the ideal application clustering solution for a software publisher looking for a simple and economical high availability software. We are deploying SafeKit worldwide and we currently have more than 80 SafeKit clusters on Windows with our critical TV broadcasting application through terrestrial, satellite, cable and IP-TV. SafeKit implements the continuous and real-time replication of our database as well as the automatic failover of our application for software and hardware failures. Without modifying our application, it was possible for us to customize the installation of SafeKit. Since then, the time of preparation and implementation has been significantly reduced.”
Finance [+]
The European Society of Warranties and Guarantees in Natixis uses SafeKit as a high availability solution for its applications.
Tony Myers, Director of Business Development says:
“By developing applications for air traffic control, Copperchase is in one of the most critical business activities. We absolutely need our applications to be available all the time. We have found with SafeKit a simple and complete clustering solution for our needs. This software combines in a single product load balancing, real time data replication with no data loss and automatic failover. This is why, Copperchase deploys SafeKit for air traffic control in airports in the UK and the 30 countries where we are present.”
“Automation of line 1 of the Paris subway is a major project for RATP, requiring a centralized command room (CCR) designed to resist IT failures. With SafeKit, we have three distinct advantages to meet this need. Firstly, SafeKit is a purely software solution that does not demand the use of shared disks on a SAN and network boxes for load balancing. It is very simple to separate our servers into separate machine rooms. Moreover, this clustering solution is homogeneous for our Windows and Unix platforms. SafeKit provides the three functions that we needed: load balancing between servers, automatic failover after an incident and real time data replication.”
And also, Philippe Marsol, Atos BU Transport, Integration Manager says:
“SafeKit is a simple and powerful product for application high availability. We have integrated SafeKit in our critical projects like the supervision of Paris metro Line 4 (the control room) or Marseille Line 1 and Line 2 (the operations center). Thanks to the simplicity of the product, we gained time for the integration and validation of the solution and we had also quick answers to our questions with a responsive Evidian team.”
“SafeKit perfectly meets the needs of a software vendor. Its main advantage is that it brings in high availability through a software option that is added to our own multi-platform software suite. This way, we are not dependent on a specific and costly hardware clustering solution that is not only difficult to install and maintain, but also differs according to client environments. With SafeKit, our firefighter call centers are run with an integrated software clustering solution, which is the same for all our customers, is user friendly and for which we master the installation up to after-sales support.”
“Our production team implemented the SafeKit solution without any difficulty on 14 Windows and Linux clusters. Our critical activity is thus secure, with high-availability and load balancing functions. The advantages of this product are easy deployment and administration of clusters, on the one hand, and uniformity of the solution in the face of heterogeneous operating systems, on the other hand.”
Supports multiple heartbeats and vitual IP addresses
Offers configurable software, hardware and network checkers
For the quorum, does not require a special disk or a third machine or a dedicated link between both servers
Automatic failover of services with a recovery time in the order of one minute
Automatic failback when a server comes back after a failure (no manual operation)
A very simple console to deploy the solution and to maintain it afterwards for end-customer
Supports human errors (40% of causes of unavailability) thanks to its simplicity
Supports software failures (40% of causes of unavailability): regression on software update (version N and N+1 can coexist), Operating System frozen, software bug
Supports hardware and environment failures (20% of causes of unavailability), including the complete failure of a computer room with 2 nodes in two remote sites
What is the recovery time (RTO) [+]
RTO is the time during which the application is unavailable in case of failure. RTO of the SafeKit mirror solution is in the order of 1 mn.
For a hardware failure, RTO = heartbeat timeout (default 30 s, can be changed in userconfig.xml) + time to restart services.
For a software failure or an administrator restart, RTO = time to (cleanly) stop services + time to restart them.
Be careful, with solutions that reboot a full virtual machine in case of failure, the RTO is unpredictable as manual operations may be required after a hardware crash to reboot the virtual machine.
What is the data loss (RPO) [+]
RPO reflects the data loss in case of failure. RPO of the SafeKit mirror solution is 0 as the replication is synchronous and real-time.
Be careful, with asynchronous replication, RPO is not 0 and there is data loss in case of failure when the application restarts on the secondary server.
Supports multiple monitoring channels on multiple networks for server failure detection
Supports multiple vitual IP addresses
Offers configurable software, hardware and network checkers
Offers the mirror cluster with synchronous real-time replication and failover
Automatic failover with a recovery time in the order of a few seconds
Automatic failback when a server comes back after a failure (no manual operation)
A very simple console to deploy the solution and to maintain it afterwards for end-customer
Supports human errors (40% of causes of unavailability) thanks to its simplicity
Supports software failures (40% of causes of unavailability): regression on software update (version N and N+1 can coexist), Operating System frozen, software bug
Supports hardware and environment failures (20% of causes of unavailability), including the complete failure of a computer room with 2 nodes in two remote sites
What is the recovery time (RTO) [+]
RTO is the time during which the application is unavailable in case of failure. RTO of the SafeKit farm solution is in the order of a few seconds on hardware failure.
For a hardware failure, RTO = failure detection timeout through monitoring channels (default a few seconds): after the timeout the load balancing filters are reconfigured.
For a software failure or an administrator restart, RTO = time to (cleanly) stop services + time to restart them.
The Disaster Recovery Plan makes the solution more complex and increases the cost by requiring disk bays replicated across a SAN between two geographically remote sites. 
