Strategies for Creating Hitachi TrueCopy and Universal Replicator Protection Groups

Before you begin creating protection groups, consider the following strategies:

• Taking the application offline before creating the protection group.

  This strategy is the most straightforward because you use a single command to create the protection group on one cluster, retrieve the information on the other cluster, and start the protection group. However, because the protection group is not brought online until the end of the process, you must take the application resource group offline to add it to the protection group.

• Creating the protection group while the application remains online.

  While this strategy allows you to create a protection group without any application outage, it requires issuing more commands.

The following sections describe the steps for each strategy.

• Creating a Protection Group While the Application Is Offline

• Creating a Protection Group While the Application Is Online

Creating a Protection Group While the Application Is Offline

To create a protection group while the application resource group is offline, complete the following steps.

• Create the protection group from a cluster node.

  For more information, see How to Create and Configure a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group That Does Not Use Oracle Real Application Clusters or How to Create a Protection Group for Oracle Real Application Clusters.

• Add the data replication device group to the protection group.

  For more information, see How to Add a Data Replication Device Group to a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

• Take the application resource group offline.

• Add the application resource group to the protection group.

  For more information, see How to Add an Application Resource Group to a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

• On the other cluster, retrieve the protection group configuration.

  For more information, see How to Replicate the Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group Configuration to a Secondary Cluster.

• From either cluster, start the protection group globally.

  For more information, see How to Activate a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

Creating a Protection Group While the Application Is Online

To add an existing application resource group to a new protection group without taking the application offline, complete the following steps on the cluster where the application resource group is online.

• Create the protection group from a cluster node.

  For more information, see How to Create and Configure a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group That Does Not Use Oracle Real Application Clusters or How to Create a Protection Group for Oracle Real Application Clusters.

• Add the data replication device group to the protection group.

  For more information, see How to Add a Data Replication Device Group to a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

• Start the protection group locally.

  For more information, see How to Activate a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

• Add the application resource group to the protection group.

  For more information, see How to Add an Application Resource Group to a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

Complete the following steps on the other cluster.

• Retrieve the protection group configuration.

  For more information, see How to Replicate the Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group Configuration to a Secondary Cluster.

• Activate the protection group locally.

  For more information, see How to Activate a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group.

Example 2-1 Creating a Hitachi TrueCopy or Universal Replicator Protection Group While the Application Remains Online

This example creates a protection group without taking the application offline.

In this example, the apprg1 resource group is online on the cluster-paris cluster.

1. Create the protection group on cluster-paris.

   phys-paris-1# geopg create -d truecopy -p Nodelist=phys-paris-1,phys-paris-2 \
   -o Primary -s paris-newyork-ps tcpg
   Protection group "tcpg" has been successfully created

2. Add the device group, tcdg, to the protection group.

   phys-paris-1# geopg add-device-group -p fence_level=async tcdg tcpg

3. Activate the protection group locally.

   phys-paris-1# geopg start -e local tcpg
   Processing operation.... this may take a while....
   Protection group "tcpg" successfully started.

4. Add to the protection group an application resource group that is already online.

   phys-paris-1# geopg add-resource-group apprg1 tcpg
   Following resource groups were successfully inserted:
               "apprg1"

5. Verify that the application resource group was added successfully.

   phys-paris-1# geoadm status
   Cluster: cluster-paris
   
      Partnership "paris-newyork-ps"    : OK
         Partner clusters               : newyork
         Synchronization                : OK
         ICRM Connection                : OK
   
         Heartbeat "hb_cluster-paris~cluster-newyork" monitoring \
   "paris-newyork-ps" OK
            Plug-in "ping-plugin"       : Inactive
            Plug-in "tcp_udp_plugin"    : OK
   
      Protection group "tcpg"           : Degraded
         Partnership                    : paris-newyork-ps
         Synchronization                : OK
   
         Cluster cluster-paris          : Degraded
            Role                        : Primary
            Configuration               : OK
            Data replication            : Degraded
            Resource groups             : OK
   
         Cluster cluster-newyork        : Unknown
            Role                        : Unknown
            Configuration               : Unknown
            Data Replication            : Unknown
            Resource Groups             : Unknown

6. On a node of the partner cluster, retrieve the protection group.

   phys-newyork-1# geopg get -s paris-newyork-ps tcpg
   Protection group "tcpg" has been successfully created.

7. Activate the protection group locally on the partner cluster.

   phys-newyork-1# geopg start -e local tcpg
   Processing operation.... this may take a while....
   Protection group "tcpg" successfully started.

8. Verify that the protection group was successfully created and activated.

   Running the geoadm status command on cluster-paris produces the following output:

   phys-paris-1# geoadm status
   Cluster: cluster-paris
   
      Partnership "paris-newyork-ps"        : OK
         Partner clusters                   : newyork
         Synchronization                    : OK
         ICRM Connection                    : OK
   
         Heartbeat "hb_cluster-paris~cluster-newyork" monitoring \
   "paris-newyork-ps": OK             
            Plug-in "ping-plugin"           : Inactive
            Plug-in "tcp_udp_plugin"        : OK
   
      Protection group "tcpg"               : Degraded
         Partnership                        : paris-newyork-ps
         Synchronization                    : OK
   
         Cluster cluster-paris              : Degraded
            Role                            : Primary
            Configuration                   : OK
            Data replication                : Degraded
            Resource groups                 : OK
   
         Cluster cluster-newyork            : Degraded
            Role                            : Secondary
            Configuration                   : OK
            Data Replication                : Degraded
            Resource Groups                 : OK