Automated Disaster Recovery Protection Clustering Solution For Leading International Macro Hedge Fund

netConsult Selects SteelEye LifeKeeper For Disaster Recovery Protection Clustering Solution of Exchange, Oracle9i and SQL Server Trading Systems.

netConsult is a leading consulting and systems integration provider specializing in data security management for financial services firms. It has implemented SteelEye LifeKeeper to provide automated disaster recovery protection for one of its key clients, a leading international macro hedge fund based in London, England.

Complete, Automated Disaster Recovery Protection Clustering Solution

“Due to the real-time, high-value nature of our client’s business, any kind of failure in their mission critical systems prevents them from completing timely trades. It can have significant impact upon their business. Especially,  in terms of the profitability of transactions and the confidence of their investment clients,” said Richard McDonald principal and founder of netConsult. “SteelEye LifeKeeper is one of four disaster recovery software solutions we researched on behalf of our client. The deciding factors in favor of LifeKeeper were that: it was the only truly complete, automated solution for disaster recovery. It was the only product that was capable of being demonstrated out of the box. And was by far the most reasonably priced given the complexity of our client’s environment, including the need to cluster a heterogeneous mix of storage and servers.”

Increased Server And Application Availability

“Coupled with overall heightened security concerns, it became imperative for our client to implement a comprehensive solution for business continuity. It should function reliably and efficiently. Regardless of the scale of interruption, from a simple server failure to a disaster requiring complete site recovery,” McDonald added. “We appreciated the assurance of disaster recovery protection. Additionally, our client has benefited greatly from the overall increase in server and application availability that the LifeKeeper clustering solution has made possible.”

Effectiveness & Stability Of LifeKeeper

LifeKeeper is being used to ensure complete disaster recovery protection of netConsult’s client’s core, business-critical trading systems. These include: Calypso a currency trading system based on Oracle 9i from Calypso Technology; Tradar Portfolio, also a currency trading system based on Microsoft SQL Server from Tradar Limited; and Microsoft Exchange Server, a messaging and collaboration platform being used for internal communication and confirmation of trading orders. The SteelEye LifeKeeper solution provides automated monitoring, failover and failback of these systems, coupled with integrated disk-level data replication between the customer’s primary business location in the heart of London, and its managed recovery site some distance outside of London, operated by Sungard Data Systems.

SteelEye LifeKeeper is installed on eight servers in a geographically dispersed, heterogeneous stretch-cluster configuration of four server pairs. All running the Windows 2000 operating system – four HP ProLiant BL20p G2 blade servers, accessing Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage at the primary location. They are individually clustered over a wide-area network with four HP ProLiant DL380 G2 and DL380 G3 servers, accessing HP MSA1000 storage at the recovery site. Each of the server pairs provide individual high availability protection for the Calypso, Tradar and Exchange systems respectively. The fourth server pair ensures high availability of file and print services. The integrated, disk-level data replication capabilities within LifeKeeper enable the continuous synchronization of the server pairs. Thereby the creation of a stretch-cluster configuration to support disaster recovery over a wide area network.

Disaster Recovery Clustering of Exchange

McDonald went on to say “LifeKeeper proved to be a hands-off solution that was easy to implement in an environment known for its complexities. Since going live we have experienced several server outages. The incidents involved our client’s Oracle and SQL Server systems. LifeKeeper handled so well that no interruption or change in level of service was noticed by any users.”

In addition to the benefit of complete Disaster Recovery Protection Clustering Solution, the LifeKeeper solution has proved to be very useful during systems maintenance. Previously, it was necessary to undertake the manual and time-consuming process of configuring and manually migrating users to backup systems. Now, with LifeKeeper, production systems and user connectivity can be automatically failed over to the recovery location while maintenance is applied to the primary server. Once this task is complete, systems and users are failed back in a similar automated fashion.

“The support we have received from the SteelEye technical team during and after implementation has been excellent,” McDonald concluded. “The deployment of disaster recovery solutions for environments like Exchange and Oracle is no simple task. SteelEye continues to demonstrate a broad range of experience and knowledge, which we value greatly.”

Ensure Business Continuity

“We are excited by the selection of our SteelEye LifeKeeper Disaster Recovery solution by netConsult. The latter is a very well-respected financial services IT consultancy,” said John Banfield, European sales director for SteelEye. “The ability of the LifeKeeper solution to address their client’s critical business requirements and technical complexity is a strong validation of our approach. It is solid proof that LifeKeeper delivers industrial-strength assurance of continuity in the most demanding of environments.”

To find out how our Disaster Recovery Protection Clustering Solution can benefit you, go here.