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Going steady
Look inside the future of business continuity solutions.
by Scott Steinberg
The wheels of industry are always turning. In today's constantly active and evolving marketplace, it's imperative that your business remain operational.
That's why Teradata's Business Continuity Solutions—including dual-active systems—do not simply address loss prevention and disaster recovery issues. They also represent a complete, turnkey solution for corporations that seek continuous availability for applications and users and an end to all outages, planned and unforeseen alike.
"Availability of applications and protection of data are crucial concerns," says Imad Birouty, Teradata's Business Continuity Solutions marketing manager. "As time-sensitive as information has become, and as important as its hands-on readiness is to commercial activity, companies can't afford to be without it."
It's a question of value—and also one of survival. The most recent spate of terrorist incidents and natural disasters is a vivid, in-your-face reminder of both the potential threat and the consequences of the failure to prepare.
Moreover, regulatory requirements in many industries have driven home the legal consequences of failing to protect data, instituting penalties that range from embarrassment to fines and imprisonment. And companies denied access to mission-critical data for longer than 48 hours tend to not exist after one year. Those businesses that plan have a greater chance of survival than those that don't.
Continuous availability
While being prepared for a disaster is how business continuity has traditionally been approached, there is a new point of view. "An environment of continuous availability for applications and users creates an opportunity to host applications that require such an environment of the data warehouse," says Birouty.
Gone are the days of a data warehouse being a back-end system for a select few users. Today, the data warehouse provides value to a broad range of users with various functions.
Dual-active implementations are just one of the key ways Teradata's Business Continuity Solutions help minimize or eliminate downtime entirely. How? By eliminating single points of warehouse unavailability for certain classes of
applications and users.
The first issue such offerings address is availability, or the elimination of outages caused by natural disasters and regular system maintenance alike.
The second issue, also of paramount importance, is recoverability. Put simply, this means addressing how much downtime is acceptable and how fast your business must be back up and running.
Last but not least, data protection is also a concern. Ask yourself: Where would I be with data of questionable integrity? How much would my business suffer if it weren't stored in a fixed and working state? What price must be paid if company goals and regulatory mandates for long-term archiving aren't met?
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Figure 1
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Components of Teradata's Dual Active Solution consist of individual Teradata systems and application servers; data synchronization capabilities; workload management tools; and monitoring and control features.
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Dual active
Here is the dual-active concept in a nutshell: two individual Teradata Warehouse systems, the first containing all of the data of the warehouse and the second containing all or a subset of the data of the first (see figure 1). Applications have access to one or both systems, allowing the workload to be shared between the two systems. The two systems maintain data synchronization with each other and operate hand-in-hand to ensure maximum availability to applications and users.
The Teradata Dual Active Solution provides a continuously available data warehouse environment capable of delivering consistent and predictable end-user performance for certain classes of critical applications. Should a single system fail (or require downtime for maintenance), certain classes of users are ensured the same access, response times and performance they've become accustomed to. From the end user's perspective, the system is always operating as normal. Courtesy of Teradata Query Director, a program that operates silently in the background, workers think they're interfacing with the system directly—the process is entirely transparent to users and applications as well.
"No single system is up and running all the time or able to meet availability requirements the same way as a dual-active solution," says Stan Mlynarczyk, director of enterprise Teradata architecture for the Americas. "This isn't a service we set out to create. It is one customers demanded, by virtue of their own business needs."
Dual-active solutions also provide a way to gain additional value from fully amortized assets. An older system may not possess the technical might or storage to meet your entire firm's computing needs alone. Rather than throw out a depreciated piece of hardware, pair it with a new system instead, letting the less sophisticated model add supplemental data processing and warehousing power.
And fulfilling those demands is possible with help from Teradata subject matter experts, who are capable of crafting a custom-tailored solution for firms of any size or specialization.
Fitting your needs
"No matter if you're moving into data warehousing or already doing business within the framework of a complex, mature environment, help is easily forthcoming," says Birouty. "We have a business continuity solution to fit every need and every pocketbook." (See figure 2.)
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Figure 2
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Based on your company demands for availability, recoverability and data protection there is an appropriate Teradata Business Continuity Solution.
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Every Teradata system comes with built-in business continuity features,
such as redundant components (e.g., dual power supplies), RAID (redundant array of independent disks) storage, standard cliques and dual A/C input. "No system ships without a certain minimum of
coverage," Birouty explains. "We invest heavily in R&D and enterprise-class computing."
Teradata offers a broad range of Business Continuity Solutions to help
customers meet their particular needs.
Fallback—configurable at the table or database level—is one of those solutions, working automatically behind the scenes for your benefit. Recovery time following data corruption events averages 34 minutes; in some cases, recovery can be as quick as 15 minutes. Non-fallback systems average 12 hours (1.1 hours in a best-case scenario).
A full portfolio of backup, archive
and restore (BAR) services is also available, with affordable, industry-standard software and hardware solutions for long-term data archiving.
Should you desire, help is always on call through Teradata Recovery Centers. These cost-effective operations, managed and operated by Teradata certified professionals and able to host any Teradata Database version, offer specialized assistance 24/7. They prove an excellent choice for corporations without a second data center or those that prefer a secure, off-site recovery option.
Performance Continuity, achieved
by using Hot Standby Nodes and Large Cliques, is yet another business continuity service that allows the maintenance of consistent system performance.
These features operate automatically, without operator intervention. Users benefit by getting their work done in
the usual, timely manner.
Performance and capacity services also ensure you get maximum value from a system through a holistic approach (e.g., coaching/mentoring, application tuning, and best-practices assessment).
Workload management ensures consistent response times by taking control over query submission and job prioritization.
Finally, Teradata support services further prove an essential cornerstone upon which business continuity is founded. From instant fault notification to on-site coverage, you're always in good hands with the proven category leader.
Ultimately, it all comes down to how your company values availability, recoverability and data protection.
Are you prepared?
"The costs associated with downtime are now unprecedented," says John Dewey, enterprise architect, Teradata Global
Consulting Services. "Across the board,
systems are quickly moving into real-time environments. Timing is more critical
than ever and if you can't get at data, you can't service your customers."
By maintaining high availability you create an environment that allows critical applications to harness the power of the data warehouse. A retailer with hundreds
of store locations, for example, can optimize inventory management across all stores. By comparing a product's actual stock level against stock requirements, frequency of sale and stock levels of nearby store locations, all in real time, the retailer may decide to relocate inventory from a nearby store rather than issue a purchase order for additional inventory. This keeps overall inventories at the right levels while ensuring the right product is in the right location at the right time.
Being able to monitor the frequency of a product's sale in real time and determining the best and fastest way to restock shelves can mean the difference between identifying and capitalizing on a sales opportunity and giving that business to your competitors.
System performance improves because feedback and response times become consistent, so you can always count on accurate data being delivered promptly whenever required. Users are able to access data from anywhere at any time without perceived interruption—meeting your important service level agreement (SLA) standards.
Planned and unplanned downtime is reduced or stamped out entirely. Single points of failure cease to be a concern. Even the impact of local and geographic disasters is effectively countered. "Whether you log in at midnight or in the midst of a hurricane, it doesn't matter," says Dewey. "The system is always there and ready to serve."
By conducting a business impact analysis, Teradata Professional Services can determine the effects of downtime on your system's applications, performance and data, and can recommend appropriate business continuity solutions.
Training on the solution can be achieved via personalized workshops—a shorter alternative to standard Teradata education classes consisting of classroom sessions that last between two days and a week.
Implementing a successful Teradata Business Continuity Solution demands
a well-thought-out disaster recovery execution plan. Together, Teradata experts and those inside the company create call lists, develop a detailed sequence of steps and procedures should disaster strike, define responsibilities and document the entire plan. Once in place, annual reviews and updates are recommended to keep your execution plan current.
"Information is the lifeblood of companies today," says Birouty. "With it you can be successful, and without it you may not. Teradata's Business Continuity Solutions services aren't just an insurance policy against disaster. They're the only way to stay on equal footing with competitors, period." T
To view more on business continuity solutions, go to Lessons learned: Teradata's Dual Active Solution.
Scott Steinberg's articles have appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Rolling Stone.
Getting started
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Successfully implementing
the Teradata Dual Active Solution
You're ready to enable mission-critical applications. Guarantee consistent availability and response times. Provide effective workload balancing. Achieve unprecedented ROI. Minimize the cost, effort and time investment associated with disaster recovery.
In short, you're ready to implement the Teradata Dual Active Solution. With recent polls showing that over 70% of corporations also require these services, you're in good company. Still, you can't help but wonder—where to start? Teradata's Professional Services group can help.
"Many companies make the decision to protect themselves in terms of disaster recovery," says Tom Fastner, Teradata senior consultant. "But for just a little more, you can successfully execute a dual-active implementation,
plus enjoy all the exclusive, increasingly important benefits such solutions offer."
While certainly a one-stop way to ensure uninterrupted performance, dual-active solutions aren't single-shot remedies. They're built from a suite of products and services that operate hand-in-hand to meet your business needs.
At the most basic level, components include individualized Teradata systems and application servers, separated by geographic locale to eliminate single points of failure. These data warehouses—which can be constructed using newly acquired equipment or already amortized equipment—needn't even utilize the same operating system or hardware components.
You can load data into one system and have it replicated on the other system; or you can dual-load data in real time. Either way, an identical copy of the data is reliably kept in sync on both systems, and you always know where you are in the duplication process, and you've guaranteed that loads can continue unabated if one system becomes unavailable.
Helpful workload management features include Teradata Query Director, which enables seamless access to the systems. End users see the same interface and experience the same feedback and response times. Teradata Priority Scheduler and Teradata Dynamic Workload Manager further provide intelligent routing, minimizing the effects of single-system faults.
"Regardless of which system an application's housed on, employees never know the difference," says Fastner. "Should system failure occur, content that's available on both systems always remains at the ready."
Consistent monitoring of state information, system events, batch jobs, health checks and near real-time feeds through software feedback and oversight are also key parts of any dual-active solution. In the end, it isn't a question of whether to protect yourself against planned or unplanned outages—merely an issue of how well to do so.
Simple disaster recovery services and monitoring features will have you back up and running within hours or days. But a dual-active solution with dynamic query routing functions? Think mere minutes—or seconds.
"Operating without dual-active is like piloting a single-engine plane," says Mark Mitchell, a Teradata senior consultant. "If there's a problem with the engine, you have to land and possibly replace it, which takes considerable time and inconvenience. That's disaster recovery. Using a dual-active solution instead is equivalent to flying a multi-engine commercial jet. Should one engine go out, preplanned procedures are executed immediately to ensure that the flight continues safely without experiencing a disaster."
Custom solutions can be tailored for clients of any size or industry, meeting their needs for availability and recoverability. Factors such as number of batch jobs and their complexity, as well as real-time feeds, data synchronization, workload routing and capacity planning are all part of the considerations involved in a dual-active solution.
In short, you call the shots. Teradata works with internal sponsors, subject matter experts and technical leads to perform scenario planning and to flesh out a game plan.
"Ask yourself: What level of recoverability do you need? What data is required to solve particular business problems? How current must the information be?" says Mitchell. "You've got questions … We have the answers." |
© Teradata Magazine-March 2006
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