HotSchedules Leverages Dell OpenManage and Microsoft Hyper-V
With over 300,000 end-users of their public facing SaaS application, Austin-based HotSchedules has implemented high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) in multiple phases. The critical business need (driver) is to recover from the catastrophic loss of the primary datacenter.
HotSchedules implemented Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager, and DoubleTake for Hyper-V to protect their critical applications such as SQL and their Web-based product environment. I'd like to outline their phased approach to their implementation. Here it goes:
- Phase 1 of the project virtualized numerous servers on the Microsoft Hyper-V platform and reside on a Microsoft Cluster on Dell PowerEdge servers and PowerVault iSCSI storage. Standalone Hyper-V servers also exist, which host critical and non-critical applications. Likewise, four standalone SQL 2000 Servers exist, which house the bulk of the company's customer-facing critical data. This solution is well-defined on both Dell's case study website and Microsoft.com as HotSchedules was a Hyper-V early adopter as well.
- Phase 2 of the disaster recovery plan was to provide DR for the priority standalone Hyper-V servers that exist in the environment. Double-Take for Hyper-V does not support a Hyper-V cluster, that capability is included in the latest version of DoubleTake's GeoCluster product. This was achieved on both source and target Dell PowerEdge servers and PowerVault iSCSI storage. The Hyper-V WS2008 Virtual Machines (VMs) were then protected and replicated between the primary data center and secondary data center over a dedicated link.
- Phase 3 of the disaster recovery plan was focused on the database servers being replicated from physical (2:1 ratio) to physical machines using standard Double-Take with the application manager for SQL. The SQL servers were then protected and replicated between the primary data center and secondary data center over the same dedicated link.
It is always a source of pride for a consultant to be able design solutions that enable customers to meet their business goals. In this case we were able to protect the customer's applications and data while increasing the service availability, performance and scalability and reducing operating cost. Here's a recent video we shot of them discussing their deployment.