Creating and Using Scenarios › Manage Services

Manage Services

As part of scenario creation or modification, you can specify the services to manage. During scenario creation, the services management screens are displayed in the Scenario Creation Wizard. For existing scenarios, you can also manage services from the CA ARCserve RHA Manager Root Directories tab.

Services discovered on the specified Master server are automatically shown on the Services Discovery Result screen in the Scenario Creation Wizard.

The following steps are for Custom Application scenarios.

To manage services

• All - lists all services discovered on the Master server
• Managed Services - lists only the checked services
• Oracle Database - lists Oracle-related services if the current host has Oracle installed
• Microsoft SQL Server - lists SQL Server-related services if the current host has SQL Server installed
• Microsoft IIS Server - lists IIS Server-related services if the current host has IIS Server installed
• Microsoft SharePoint Server - lists SharePoint Server-related services if the current host has SharePoint Server installed
• VMware vCenter Server - lists vCenter Server-related services if the current host has vCenter Server installed
• Microsoft Exchange Server - lists Microsoft Exchange Server-related services if the current host has Microsoft Exchange Server installed
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server - lists Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server-related services if the current host has Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server installed

1. Select a Service to Monitor. Click the box to the left of each service listed to select it for monitoring.

   Important! Do not use Services Management to monitor every service on the Master server in a single scenario. This scenario type is not designed to protect an entire server.

2. Click Next to proceed to the Services Setting screen.

   

3. In the Start Order column for each service you chose, specify the numeric value representing start order. For services where order does not matter, use the default value, (Not Set). The options available in the drop down list update as you configure the value. The first service has only two options: Not Set and 1. The second service has three options: Not Set, 1 and 2, and so on. If you assign the same start order to two services, CA ARCserve RHA automatically reorders the selections you already made.
4. In Replication scenarios, the Critical column is disabled. In HA scenarios, use the Critical column to specify if a service should trigger switchover when it fails. By default, all services are marked Critical. Clear the box for any service whose failure does not require switchover to the stand-by server.

Import Scenarios

You can import scenarios using an XML configuration file. (From the CA ARCserve RHA Manager, click Scenario, Import. Select Custom Application xml config (*.cxc), select the file name and then click Open.)

Specify the following values (they are not case-sensitive).

XML Version

User-defined, for example, 1.0.

Product Type

This value corresponds to the Product Type selection made in the Scenario Creation Wizard. "Dr" for Replication and Data Recovery Scenario. "Ha" for High Availability scenario. (Content Distribution is not supported.)

IsAR

Is this an Assured Recovery scenario? Set this value to "TRUE" to specify AR. Omit the line or set this value to false if you don't want to perform Assured Recovery.

ScenarioName

Provide a name for your scenario. If you omit this line, the default "customApp(1)" is used.

RootDirs and RootDir

The RootDirs object can have several child nodes. Specify root directory values for the data and application you wish to protect. If you omit this line, you must specify the root directories using the CA ARCserve RHA Manager.

ExcludePath_Filter

Specify the directory that should be excluded from the scenario.

FileRegExpr_Filter

Set the regular expression filter, "include="True", if you want to set the include filter, otherwise, CA ARCserve RHA sets the exclude filter.

ApplicationServices

(Required) This object can have several child nodes to configure multiple services.

Service

Specify the name of the service to monitor.

is_critical

(Optional) "True" for critical. "False" for not critical. Services set as critical trigger switchover if failed.

start_order

(Optional) Specify "1" for first, "2" for second.

Example

The example shows values in italics for a MySQL Custom Application scenario. In this example, the data is stored in C:/MySQL/data and the application files are stored in C:/Program Files/MySQL/MySQL Server 5.1. The service, MySQLDemo, is marked critical, which means CA ARCserve RHA will trigger the switchover process if this service fails because this is an HA scenario.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<CustomApplication >
   <Product      val="Ha"/>
   <IsAR         val="True"/>
   <ScenarioName val="Demo_scenario"/>
   <RootDirs>
       <RootDir  val="C:/MySQL/data">
            <ExcludePath_Filter   val="aaa"/>
            <ExcludePath_Filter   val="bbb"/>
       </RootDir>
       <RootDir    val="C:/Program Files/MySQL/MySQL Server 5.1">
             <ExcludePath_Filter val="ccc"/>
             <ExcludePath_Filter val="" />
        </RootDir>
        <FileRegExpr_Filter include="True" val="*.txt  bbb ccc?.doc hhh" />
     </RootDirs>
     <ApplicationServices>
         <Service   val="MySQLDemo" is_critical="True" start_order="1"/>
         <Service   val="SQLTest" is_critical="False"  start_order="2"/>
      </ApplicationServices>
    </CustomApplication>

Use Scenario Groups

Each scenario is assigned to a default scenario group called Scenarios. You can use this group for all scenarios you create, or you can add new groups to organize your scenarios according to your own criteria. Scenario groups are displayed on both the Manager and the Overview Page.

In distributed server environments, in which several servers (database server, application server, web front end server) comprise the environment, you must create individual scenarios to protect all the servers in the deployment. If an Is Alive check triggers switchover, only the affected server is failed over to its Replica. The resulting data split, where some operations are applied to original Master servers and other operations are applied to the Replica in the failed scenario, can introduce performance issues.

Scenario groups let you manage related scenarios, such as those protecting all servers in a distributed environment, as a single entity. For example, for end-to-end protection in a distributed server environment, you may have a SQL scenario to protect the database component, and several application-specific scenarios to protect application servers. A scenario group lets you set switchover properties at the group level, instead of at individual server levels.

For more information, see Enable Scenario Group Management.

Enable Scenario Group Management

Scenario Group Management lets you manage related HA scenarios as a single entity. Switchover can be configured so that when one server fails, all servers in the scenario group switch over at once, alleviating the data split issue. Scenario Group Management applies only to high availability scenarios.

Note: You must manually create the required scenarios, assign each to the same group, and enable group management.

To enable Scenario Group Management

1. From the Manager, right-click the name of any HA scenario in the group you wish to manage centrally.
2. From the short-cut menu, click Enable Scenario Group Management.

   A confirmation message appears.

3. Click OK to continue.
4. Click the Properties tab and expand the Switchover Settings properties group.
5. If you want to switch over the whole group as a single entity, set the Switchover as a Group property to On.
6. Expand the Failure Triggers Group Switchover property and set the value to On for each scenario in the group that should trigger switchover when it fails.
7. Expand the Scenario Availability Sets property. If all servers listed in this property fail, the entire group switches over. Add the names of the scenario group that you wish to monitor and then select the scenarios in that group that will trigger group switchover.

Create Custom Application Scenario Groups

There are two ways to create a scenario group:

• During the creation of a new scenario, through the Scenario Creation Wizard.
• Before the scenario creation, through the New Group option, as described below.

Note: We recommend planning and creating the scenario groups you want to use in advance. After you assign a scenario to a certain group, you cannot move it to another group.

To create a new scenario group

1. From the Manager, click Scenario, New Group from the menu, or click the New group button on the Standard toolbar.

   A New group folder is added to the Scenario pane.

2. You can change the group's name by right-clicking it and selecting Rename from the pop-up menu, or by double-clicking the current name and entering a new name.

   The new group name appears on the following places: the Scenario pane, the Group drop-down list in the Scenario Creation Wizard, and the Overview Page.

   Note: When no scenario is defined, empty scenario groups do not appear on the Overview Page.

Set Scenario Group Properties

When you create a scenario, you can configure the group properties using the Scenario Creation Wizard.

The group properties include:

• Scenario Dependencies -- Manages the interdependencies between scenarios. Usually a distributed application has multiple components/roles/servers that are interdependent. Any scenario can be configured to depend on one or more scenarios or multiple scenarios can depend on a single scenario. These services can be handled by the Scenario Dependencies property.
• Switchover Settings -- Manages the switchover setting in a distributed group. Some of the switchover setting options include:
  • Switchover as a Group: If this option is set to On, the whole group (all the scenarios) will be automatically switched over together in case one of the scenarios is failed and ready to take switchover.
  • Failure Triggers Group Switchover: A single failure can trigger a group switchover. By default, all scenarios can trigger group switchover, and you can configure some light-weight scenarios to be set to Off.
  • Execute Scenario Switchover Settings: This option decides whether the scenario should execute its own switchover settings.
• Scenario Availability Sets -- A distributed application might configure two or more servers to provide same services to improve availability or performance. When one server is down, the other servers are still working and can still provide the services. Scenario Availability Set will be used when CA ARCserve RHA manages these servers/scenarios of that distributed application.

  If two scenarios are configured in the same Scenario Availability Set, the group switchover is initiated only when both scenarios fail. This function is not invoked when one of the options fail.

Note: The same group can have one or more Scenario Availability Sets, but one scenario cannot be configured in two different sets.

Run a Scenario Group

Before you can run a scenario group, CA ARCserve RHA performs a pre-run verification of each scenario in the group and reports any errors or warnings. Each scenario in the group must pass verification for the group to run.

To avoid SQL Server connection errors, make sure the Master and Replica servers use the same port, or make sure the SQL Server service is running as a local system, which sets SPN properly.

To run a scenario group

1. When pre-run verification is successful, click Run Now to run the whole group.

   The Run dialog opens.

2. Choose a synchronization method and click OK. By default, the synchronization method for the group is set to use the method selected for each individual scenario within it. Or, you may apply a method to all scenarios.

   The status for all scenarios in the group changes to Running.

Stop a Scenario Group

You must stop a group that is currently running if you want to add or remove scenarios. To stop a group, you must stop all scenarios in that group. Click Stop on the Manager toolbar for each scenario in sequence. There is no failure recorded by stopping scenarios.