Note:

Use OCI Full Stack DR to Attach or Detach a Non-Moving Compute Block Volumes with DR Drill Plans

Introduction

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Full Stack Disaster Recovery (OCI Full Stack DR) provides a fully automated and comprehensive disaster recovery orchestration solution for all the layers of a full-stack cloud application, including infrastructure, database, and the application middle tier. Using Full Stack DR, you can recover your full stack applications across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) regions or availability domains within the same region.

OCI Full Stack Disaster Recovery offers exceptional flexibility. It allows you to utilize user-defined groups within the Disaster Recovery (DR) plan, enabling the management of customized steps as part of the overall DR plan. Once OCI Full Stack Disaster Recovery establishes the initial DR plan with built-in plan groups and steps, you can incorporate additional user-defined plan groups and steps. You can invoke scripts and OCI Functions with an user-defined plan group.

For warm standby or active-passive topology, earlier administrators could use user-defined plan groups and scripts to handle cross region replicated block volumes in the DR region and unmount/mount as well as detach/attach the block volumes to the compute instances. With the new enhancement in OCI Full stack DR, users can specify block volumes that need to be detached or attached while adding the non-moving instances in the DR protection group. OCI Full Stack DR will then automatically generate plan groups and steps during the DR plan creation.

OCI Full Stack DR’s, two DR drill plan types gives users the flexibility to validate recovery for an entire application stack and power to perform a complete dry run of your failover plan at the click of a button.

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to use OCI Full Stack DR non-moving compute block volume enhancements with DR drill plans.

DR Drill Plan: A type of DR plan that creates a replica of the production application stack in the standby region without disrupting their production stack. There are two types of DR drill plans:

Start DR Drill Plan: Generates a plan similar to a failover since the steps performed during a drill are only executed in the standby region.

Stop DR Drill Plan: Generates a plan that tears down whatever the start DR plan created at the standby region.

Deployment Architecture

Non moving architecture

Note:

Objectives

The following tasks will be covered in the tutorial:

  1. Create volume groups with cross region replication for the block volume in primary region
  2. Create and associate DR Protection Groups in primary and standby regions
  3. Add and update members in primary DR Protection Group
  4. Add and update members in standby DR Protection Group
  5. Create Start drill plan in standby region
  6. Execute prechecks and run Start drill plan
  7. Create Stop drill plan in standby region
  8. Execute prechecks and run Stop drill plan

Prerequisites

Implementation

For this tutorial, we have already created the following resources.

Resources Primary Region - Frankfurt
Object Storage Bucket FSDR_storage_primary
Compartment vasudeva.manikandan
Compute VM vasu-pub-inst
Block Volume vasu-inst-blkvolume
Mount point /u01
Resources Standby Region - London
Object Storage Bucket FSDR_storage_secondary
Compartment vasudeva.manikandan
Compute VM vasu-volgrp-poc

Task 1: Create Volume Groups with Cross Region Replication for the Block Volume in Primary Region

  1. Log in to the OCI Console using the OCI Full Stack DR administrator user or user with required privileges.

  2. In the primary region (Frankfurt), click the Hamburger menu and go to Storage, Disaster Recovery, Volume Groups, and then click Create volume group.

    Create Volume group in Ashburn

  3. Add block volume of the compute vasu-pub-inst.

    Choose Boot volume in Ashburn

  4. Enable cross region replication from Frankfurt to London.

    Enable Cross region Replication in Ashburn

  5. Leave Backup policy as None, click Next and review the summary.

    Volume Group Summary

Task 2: Create and Associate DR Protection Groups in Primary and Standby Regions

  1. Go to the OCI Console, in the primary region (Frankfurt) from the Hamburger menu and navigate to Migration & Disaster Recovery, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Recovery Protection Groups, and then click Create Disaster Recovery Protection Group.

    Create Disaster Recovery Protection group in Ashburn

  2. In the standby region (London) from the Hamburger menu, go to Migration & Disaster Recovery, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Recovery Protection Groups and click Create Disaster Recovery Protection Group.

    Create Disaster Recovery Protection group in Phoenix

  3. In the primary region (Frankfurt), enter the following information and click Associate.

    • Name of the DR Protection Group (DRPG): fsdr-volgrp-poc-ff.
    • Role: Primary.
    • Peer Region: London.
    • Peer Disaster Recovery Protection Group: fsdr-volgrp-poc-uk.

    Associate Primary and Standby

Note: Verify the role of the fsdr-volgrp-poc-ff as primary and fsdr-volgrp-poc-uk as standby.

Task 3: Add and Update members in Primary DR Protection Group

  1. In primary region (Frankfurt), select the fsdr-volgrp-poc-ff DRPG and click Members and Add Members to add volume group and non-moving virtual machine (VM).

    Primary Members in Frankfurt

    Note: Ensure you choose compute instance type as non-moving instance while adding VM as a member.

  2. Under Members, click the ellipsis icon for the compute instances and click Edit.

    Edit Primary Members in Ashburn

  3. Click Show advanced options, select Block volumes, enter the following information, and then click Save changes.

    • Source block volume: vasu-inst-blkvolume.
    • Volume attachment reference instance: Volume attachment reference as block volume group that created in Task 1. In this tutorial, it is vasu-volgrp-poc.
    • Mount point: Mount point that you have created and attached to the source VM in primary. In this tutorial, it is /u01.

    Note: If you do not mention the mount point, during drill or switchover, OCI Full Stack DR will attach the block volume to the target standby VM in OCI Console. You need to manually run the mount commands in the VM to make it available.

    Edit Show Advanced Options in FF

    Edit Block volume details in FF

  4. Login to the primary region VM vasu-pub-inst and ensure /etc/fstab entries are updated with block volume and mount point details as shown in the following image.

    FSTAB details in FF

Task 4: Add and Update members in Standby DR Protection Group

  1. In standby region (London), select the fsdr-volgrp-poc-uk DRPG and click Members and Add Members to add non-moving VM.

    Primary Members in London

    Note: Ensure you choose compute instance type as non-moving instance while adding VM as a member.

  2. Under Members, click ellipsis icon of compute instance vasu-volgrp-poc and click Edit.

  3. Click Show Advanced Options, select Block Volume and enter the following information, and then click Save changes.

    • Block volume: Select source block volume that you need to attach it to target VM. In this tutorial, it is vasu-inst-blkvolume.
    • Volume attachment reference instance: Volume attachment reference is the source VM in primary which is vasu-pub-inst.
    • Mount point: Mount point as created in source VM. In this tutorial, it is /u01.

    Standby Members in AshburnLondon

  4. Login to the standby region VM vasu-volgrp-poc and ensure /etc/fstab entries are updated with block volume and mount point details as shown in the following image.

    FSTAB details in FF

Task 5: Create Start DR Drill Plan in Standby Region

Create DR plan in standby DR Protection Group fsdr-volgrp-poc-uk.

  1. Click Plans, Create plan and enter the following information, and then click Create.

    • Name: Start Drill - Trail 2.
    • Plan Type: Start Drill.

    DR Drill Plan

    Note: Make sure to create the DR drill plan from the standby DR Protection Group (London).

  2. Click the plan and ensure built-in plans have been generated as shown in the following image.

    Default built in Plan

Task 6: Execute Prechecks and Run Start Drill Plan

The Run prechecks option performs a quick validation of all steps in a DR plan.

  1. Select Start Drill - Trail 2 plan, click Run prechecks to launch the run prechecks dialog and verify for the successful completion.

    Switchover precheck

    Switchover precheck status

  2. Select Start Drill - Trail 2 plan, click Execute Disaster Recovery Plan to execute the plan.

    Run Disaster Recovery Plan

    Check the status of the plan and ensure all the steps in the plan succeed.

    Run Disaster Recovery Plan Status

  3. After the successful DR plan execution, log in to the instance in London and verify the mount points have been attached.

    Verify phx VM after switchover

  4. Once you start the drill, DR Protection Group on both primary and standby region will turn to Inactive state (Drill in Progress). During this stage, changes to the DR Protection Group on both primary and standby are restricted. When the primary and standby DR Protection Group states are DrillInProgress, you can execute only the Stop drill plans.

Task 7: Create Stop Drill Plan in Standby Region

Create DR plan in standby DR Protection Group fsdr-volgrp-poc-uk.

  1. Click Plans, Create plan and enter the following information, and then click Create.

    • Name: Stop Drill - Trail 2.
    • Plan Type: Stop Drill.

    DR Drill Plan

    Note: Note that Start DR drill plan will be in active state since we can only run Stop drill plan from the standby DR Protection Group (London).

    DR Drill Plan

  2. Click the plan and ensure built-in plans have been generated as shown in the following image.

    Default built in Plan

Task 8: Execute Prechecks and Run Stop Drill Plan

The Run prechecks option performs a quick validation of all steps in a DR plan.

  1. Select Stop Drill - Trail 2 plan, click Run prechecks to launch the run prechecks dialog and verify for the successful completion.

    Switchover precheck

    Switchover precheck status

  2. From the DR drill plan Stop Drill - Trail 2, click Execute Disaster Recovery Plan to execute the plan.

    Run Disaster Recovery Plan

    Check the status of the plan and ensure all steps in the plan succeed.

    Run Disaster Recovery Plan Status

  3. After the successful DR plan execution, log in to the instance in London and verify if the mount points have been detached.

    Verify phx VM after switchover

Next Steps

You have seen how to use DR drill plans and how to attach or detach a block volume to non-movable instances with OCI Full Stack Disaster Recovery.

Performing DR drills is an essential DR service capability that allows users to exercise and validate their business continuity configuration and plans without disrupting their production stack. The best part of DR drills is that the dry run of failover has no impact on your production application stack.

You can also further customize your DR plan by adding user defined groups as per application requirements.

Acknowledgments

More Learning Resources

Explore other labs on docs.oracle.com/learn or access more free learning content on the Oracle Learning YouTube channel. Additionally, visit education.oracle.com/learning-explorer to become an Oracle Learning Explorer.

For product documentation, visit Oracle Help Center.