Evidian
Wellington IT Solutions
Profile• Software vendor
founded in 1983.
• Banking and supply
chain solutions.
Users• Locus processes €2.6
billion in assets andover 800,000
accounts, more thanany other Credit Union
system.
Challenges• Find a simple androbust solution for
ensuring business
continuity and disasterrecovery with no data
loss.
Benefits• Wellington deploys a
SafeKit software cluster
integrated with Locus.
• The clustering solution
is independent from thecustomer’s hardware
environment.
• Standard servers,
without shared disks,
can be placed inseparate rooms fordisaster protection.

Software vendor deploys SafeKit high availability solution with its
banking application for Credit Unions.
Making a critical banking application suite highly available

Wellington IT Solutions (www.well-it.com) develops Locus, a software suite offering afull range of banking options, including ATM, on-line web services, text messaging,e-mail and Interactive Voice Response systems, for numerous Credit Unions around
Ireland and the UK.
Wellington IT Solutions needs high availability for its critical solutions:• Ensuring 24x7 availability of its application suite meant for banking activities ofCredit Unions (ATM, on-line web services...),• Combining automatic failover and replication with no data loss between 2
Wellington application servers,• Isolating servers in distinct rooms to protect them from disasters such as firedamage.
To solve these constraints, Wellington IT Solutions chose SafeKit, Evidian’s softwareonly clustering solution.

Integrated high-availability solution

Wellington IT Solutions deploys its Locus application suite on two standard Linuxservers without shared disks, as follows:• The Locus software suite, including Oracle Standard Edition, is installed oneach server,• SafeKit, the software clustering solution, is installed on each server,• A customized SafeKit module for Locus and Oracle: real-time application data
replication over the network, failure recovery and automatic change of virtual IP
address.
Thus, with SafeKit, customers of Credit Unions can 24x7 connect to their accounts
through ATM, on-line web services, text messaging, e-mail and Interactive Voice
Response systems. Moreover, Credit Unions save the cost of shared disks andbusiness editions of operating systems and databases.

Case study > Software vendor and high availability

www.evidian.com

Deployment of a SafeKit cluster at Wellington IT Solutions
Phase 1. Normal status.
Server 1 runs the application. SafeKit replicates on server 2,
in real time over the network, the files opened by theapplication. Only the modifications made by theapplication are replicated, thereby limiting the traffic.

“Business continuity anddisaster recovery are amajor concern for our Locus
banking application
deployed in numerous
Credit Unions around
Ireland and the UK. We
have found with SafeKit asimple and robust solution
for high availability andsynchronous replication
between two servers with nodata loss. With this software
solution, we are notdependent on a specificand costly hardware
clustering solution. It is aperfect tool to provide asoftware high availability
option to an application ofa software vendor.”Peter Knight,
Sales Manager,
Wellington IT Solutions.

There are no prerequisites in terms of server organization.
For example, the files may be on a RAID5 disk on server 1
and on a simple disk on server 2.

farm module

mirror module

Thanks to the synchronous replication of write operations on both servers, no data islost in case of failure. Therefore, any set of data committed by a transactional
application like Oracle is stored on the secondary server. (This possibility is notoffered by products that implement asynchronous replication)..

Phase 2. Switchover in case of failure.
If server 1 fails, SafeKit ensures switchover to server 2.
SafeKit switches the cluster’s virtual IP address and starts
the application on server 2. The application retrieves thereplicated files: no write operation on the disk is lost
between server 1 and server 2.
Switchover timeout is equal to the failure detection timeout (30 seconds by default)
plus the application restart time. (There is no timeout for returning or recovering thefile system on the secondary server, as is the case with disk replication solutions).

Phase 3. Failure recovery.
When server 1 is restarted, SafeKit re-synchronizes the files
automatically. Only the files modified on server 2 whenserver 1 was inactive are resynchronized. Server 1 isresynchronized without stopping the applications onserver 2.

farm module

After this re-synchronization, the system is again highly
mirror module
available. The files are again in mirror mode; the only
difference is that the application runs on server 2, with server 1 as backup.
If the administrator wants his or her application to rather run on server 1, he or she
makes the switchover manually, with a simple mouse click, or automatically.

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Evidian reserves the right to modify the characteristics of its products without prior notice.