xtium data gathering guide

8/13/2019 Xtium Data Gathering Guide

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/xtium-data-gathering-guide 1/13

Disaster Recovery Data Gathering GuideProvided by Xtium, Inc. © 2013

DISASTER RECOVERY

DATA GATHERING GUIDE



Data Gathering Template provided by Xtium © 2013

Introduction

In order to build a disaster recovery run book, you are going to need a full blueprint of your IT systems. But often there are

numerous teams that support your IT infrastructure or even individual applications or servers, and with the knowledge of

your IT ecosystem stored disparately between many minds, it may be difficult to build a run book by yourself.

So, even before tackling your run book, bring your teams’ knowledge together to create a full picture of your IT system

with this data gathering guide. Not only will it give multiple people and teams within your company the ability to create or

fill in missing pieces of your disaster recovery run book, but it will also help your IT teams understand how they interact

with each other and with your data.

The data gathering guide is used to create an overall blueprint of your business systems and applications. It will provide

the building blocks of your run book, which will also contain instructions for the order of restoration following a disasterscenario, roles and responsibilities, contact information, and standard operating procedures.

When developing your data gathering guide, start at the outside of your systems and work your way in. Begin at the outer

walls of your infrastructure, document your carriers, the location of your data lines, and their demarcation points into your

data center location(s). Next, capture networking layers including f irewalls, load balancers and virtual local area networks.

Finally, drill down to document your server infrastructure.

Once you have documented your entire primary production system, it is also critical to document your disaster recovery

system, sometimes referred to as a failover or backup system. When doing so, include details on the frequency with which

production systems are mirrored into your secondary (failover/backup) system.

Note: If your company has an existing configuration management database or a CMDB methodology in place, be sure to

align the information you collect here with the configuration item (CI) schema. The data gathering form and the run book

are also ways to validate and check existing CMDB systems.

http://pages.xtium.com/disaster-recovery-run-book-template-idc







1. Connectivity

Begin by documenting your data carriers, demarcation points of your data lines, and connectivity gear. This is an “outside -in”

approach that follows your data from outside your data center through the networking layers and into your server infrastructure.

Examples are provided in the table below.

Service

Provider Circuit Type Bandwidth CPE

CPE Gear

Model Address

Switch/Telecom

Closet Notes

Level 3 Internet 100MB No 123 Address

Blvd

Floor 5

Frame 22.1

Rack 5

Primary

Internet circuit

Verizon MPLS 10MB Yes Cisco 3650 Connectivity to

remote office

ATT Internet 10MB No Backup Internet

connectivity

When noting each connection’s demarcation point,

include the address where the line terminates as well as

where the line continues inside the data center location.

Next, include the floor, server room, switch closet, rack

and frame information where the line terminates.




2. Network Gear

Next, capture networking layers including firewalls, load balancers and virtual local area networks. Examples are provided

in the table below.

Make/Model Description for use Originating IP Destination IP

Switches

Juniper 4400 LAN connectivity 1.132.10.220 1.120.10.240

Cisco 3650 MPLS connectivity

Router

Cisco 7300 Internet Gatewayrouter

Cisco 891W Internet Gateway

router

Load Balancers

Citrix MPX-7500 Layer 4 load

balancing, session

persistence

Identify originating and destination

IP addresses for all network gear.




VPNs

Juniper SRX 100 Remote user SSL

connectivity

Firewalls

Juniper SRX 100 Network security

segmentation

Network Security

Appliances

Cisco PIX 535 IP Firewall

Identify whether each of your virtual private networks

are IPSec VPNs, Point-to-Point VPNs, or internal VPNs.

Listing details for any Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

or Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS) helps provide

additional insight into the security measures currently in

play in your network.




3. Server Inventory

It is useful to identify both your production and disaster recovery servers separately, as exemplified in the following two

charts. Doing so will provide a snapshot of your server landscape and delineate which servers are used in your production

environment as opposed to those used for disaster recovery in the event of an emergency.

One of the most important columns in the following two charts is the “priority” column, which specifies the relative

importance of your servers based on the applications or systems they support. In the event of a disaster scenario, it is

critical to know the priority for bringing up your servers. Typically, the most critical servers (marked “1” for “high priority”)

include those running your email systems and other business application servers. Level 2 priority servers often include

web servers, while file servers are usually classified as level 3. Of course, restoring data from all of these servers is

important, but restoring mission-critical business processes as quickly as possible should always be your priority.

Tip: Throughout the entire data gathering guide, there will always be the opportunity to include admin login information.

While it might be useful to associate login information with the appropriate servers or applications, make sure to not

break any security policies by documenting authentication elements in an open document. As an alternative, you might

opt to include a user ID but not the password (which you may keep in some other user access control program).




1. Production

Server

Name Priority Type

Physical/

Virtual

DB

Server Cores

RAM

GB

T1

Storage

GB

T2

Storage

GB

T3

Storage

GB

BU

Disk

GB OS Version

Application /

System Connections

Mail01 1 Exchange

2013

V

VM 10.2

4 8 1000 1500 Win

Std

Win

2012

Mail Server

App01 2 App

Server

V 2 4 300 450 Win

Std

Win

2012

Accounting Web01

Web15

DB01

SQL01 2 SQL

2012

V 1 4 8 500 1500 Win

Std

Win

SQL8

Accounting

Database

Web01 3 Web

Server

P 2 4 100 150 Win

Std

Win

2012

IIS

Xtium recommends allocating 1.5 times the production storage size for your backup

infrastructure. This is the standard we use for our customers and within our own

company. We use this standard to account for daily rate of change and any variability

in daily workloads. Providing this additional buffer will always ensure that your

backups run completely and your production server’s protection level is complete.

Specify all related upstream (web) and downstream

(database) connections in this column in order to better

understand the servers that are one connection away

from the server in each column. When building your run

book, this will help provide a visual of your overall

environment.




2. Disaster Recovery

Server

Name Priority

Server

Type

Physical/

Virtual

DB

Server Cores

RAM

GB

T1

Storage

GB

T2

Storage

GB

T3

Storage

GB

BU

Disk

GB OS Version

Application /

System Connections

Mail01 1Exchange

2013V 4 8 1000 1500

Win

Std

Win

2012Mail Server

App01

2 App

ServerV 2 4 300 450

Win

Std

Win

2012 Accounting

Web01

Web15

DB01

SQL012 SQL

2012

V 1 4 8 1000 1500Win

Std

Win

SQL8

Accounting

Database

Web01 3 Web

ServerP 2 4 100 150

Win

Std

Win

2012IIS

It is helpful to list your servers in their order ofimportance/restoration priority so that, during

disaster recovery testing or in the event of a real

disaster, you have an easy snapshot of servers to

focus on first.




3. Totals

Use this table to keep track of your servers from the previous two tables. This will provide a good at-a-glance

understanding of your overall environment to ensure you are not missing any items.

Production Secondary / Failover / DR Total

Physical

Virtual

DB Server

Cores

RAM

Storage Total

Tip: This table can also serve as a sanity check for your infrastructure and licensing. For example, sometimes the

footprint of an infrastructure environment looks larger than individual systems. If so, ask: did you actually expand, or did

you realize a particular system encompassed more than you thought? Whatever the scenario, it is important to

understand what is happening in your environment and be ready to use this data in your disaster recovery run book.




T1 Disk

T2 Disk

T3 Disk

Back Up

Windows

Standard

Enterprise

Linux




4. Application Info

Keep detailed records on all of your critical business applications so the information is available for your run book. This

section provides an example that Xtium uses when hosting solutions for Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory, both

very common (and critical) business applications.

Regardless of the application, be sure to list and understand connection points, versions, configurations and users.

Exchange:

Exchange mail

server Version of Exchange Configuration Items of note

Size of message

store

Mail01 Exchange 2013 Release 1, Service

Pack 3

35 2 TB

These application tables are not meant to diagram the system but, rather, to capture

what applications are running on your infrastructure with specific information about

each application stack. Your run book will tie together your physical server inventory

and application inventory. These tables simply house the data that will be brought

together in your run book to show the overall system architecture and restoration

processes within that architecture.




Active Directory server:

Server Name

Software

version/build/release Standalone or System? Role

Directory01 5.1 Standalone

Include group roles managed by each directory.




Questions about this guide or about disaster preparedness for your business?

Contact Us! [email protected]

800-707-9116

http://www.xtium.com/about/contact-us/

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Please%20contact%20me%20about%20the%20DR%20data%20gathering%20guide

http://pages.xtium.com/disaster-recovery-testing-guide


https://www.facebook.com/pages/Xtium/393224837387550

http://www.linkedin.com/company/264327?trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas:xtium

https://twitter.com/xtium





















mailto:[email protected]?subject=Please%20contact%20me%20about%20the%20DR%20data%20gathering%20guide

http://www.xtium.com/about/contact-us/

xtium data gathering guide

Documents