Recover to Cloud Resource Segmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data replication methods for disaster recovery and continuous availability are costly and inefficient, particularly in maintaining duplicate physical or virtual machine infrastructure, and lack effective testing mechanisms for recovery scenarios before actual disasters occur.
Innovation Solution
A Recover to Cloud (R2C) service that provisions a dedicated disaster Virtual Data Center (VDC) and a separate test VDC, where the disaster VDC is pre-allocated with dedicated resources for quick activation during disasters, and the test VDC uses shared resources from a pool to allow customers to test recovery configurations without disrupting mission-critical resources.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If dedicated resources are pre-allocated for disaster VDC to enable quick activation during disasters, then failover speed and reliability are improved, but resource utilization efficiency deteriorates due to idle dedicated resources
Solution Approach 1:
The resource pool is segmented into two distinct portions: dedicated resources reserved for disaster VDC and shared resources available for test VDC. This segmentation allows the system to guarantee quick failover by having dedicated resources ready while improving overall utilization by allowing other resources to be shared and dynamically allocated based on demand.
2Speed
If dedicated resources are pre-allocated for disaster VDC, then quick failover is enabled, but cost increases due to maintaining unused dedicated infrastructure
Solution Approach 1:
The infrastructure is divided into dedicated components (for rapid failover) and shared components (for cost efficiency). The dedicated portion ensures quick activation during disasters, while the shared portion reduces overall infrastructure costs by allowing multiple test VDCs to utilize the same physical resources dynamically.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared resource pool serves multiple functions: it supports multiple test VDCs for different customers, provides dynamic testing capabilities, and can be dynamically allocated when needed. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate dedicated infrastructure for each potential disaster scenario, thereby reducing overall infrastructure costs.
3Loss of energy
If shared resources are used for test VDC, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but testing capability deteriorates if shared resources disturb mission-critical assignments
Solution Approach 1:
The resource pool is clearly segmented into dedicated resources (untouchable for testing) and shared resources (available for testing). This segmentation ensures that testing activities using shared resources will never interfere with or disturb the mission-critical dedicated resource assignments, thereby maintaining both high resource utilization and reliable testing capability.
4Reliability
If complete duplicate infrastructure is maintained for disaster recovery, then operational continuity is ensured, but cost and complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The infrastructure is segmented into essential dedicated components needed for disaster recovery and non-essential shared components used for testing. This segmentation reduces overall infrastructure complexity by eliminating the need for complete duplicate infrastructure while maintaining the critical components necessary for operational continuity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of maintaining complete duplicate physical infrastructure, the system uses virtualization to create virtual copies of production environments. These virtual instances can be rapidly deployed and tested using shared resources, reducing both the cost and complexity of maintaining disaster recovery capabilities while ensuring operational continuity.
Data Source
AI summary
A recover to cloud (R2C) service replicates a customer production environment to virtual data centers (VDCs) operated in a cloud service provider environment. Customers provision both a disaster recovery VDC and a test VDC. At A Time of Disaster (ATOD), the disaster VDC is made available to the customer through the cloud. The disaster VDC is allocated a first set of resources dedicated to the specific customer and to disaster recovery. The test VDC, brought on line at A Time of Test (ATOT), is allocated resources from second set of resources arranged in a shared pool, separate from the first set. Provisioning of the test VDC does not disturb critical resource assignments needed in the event of a disaster.