EvidianCopperchase
Profile• Copperchase(copperchase.co.uk) isa leading supplier ofservices, systems andsolutions for air traffic
control worldwide.

ATC systems supplier Copperchase deploys SafeKit high availability in
airports for air traffic control.
Making a critical application suite highly available for air trafficcontrollers

Users

Air traffic controllers have one of the most complex and stressful jobs imaginable. In
today’s busy skies, a single error in directing airplanes can potentially lead tocatastrophic results.

• Copperchase equips
airports in over 30countries in 5continents.

The mission of UK software vendor Copperchase is to provide these professionals
with applications that facilitate decision-making. Copperchase applications manage
vital data exchanges used for aircraft operations, covering distress calls, flightsafety, meteorological data, emergencies and flight regularity information.

Challenges

Still, the best application is useless if a server, OS or software breaks down at a
critical moment. Copperchase decided to investigate how they could ensure
availability of their critical environment.

• Make the Copperchaseapplication available
24x7, a mandatory
requirement for air
traffic control.
Benefits• Copperchase deploys
SafeKit clusters inairports.
• The solution is usedevery day by thousandsof air traffic units in oneof the most stressfuljobs.
• Standard servers,
without shared disks,
reside in separate
rooms for disasterprotection.

Copperchase selected Evidian’s SafeKit high-availability software. SafeKit could beadded easily to their suite and requires no specialized hardware.
• The combined solution ensures 24x7 application availability.
• Two redundant application servers can be located in distinct rooms to protect
them from disasters.
• As a result, air traffic controllers know they can trust Copperchase software,eliminating one source of stress.

In practice: Copperchase with SafeKit high availability
When deploying its solution in an airport, Copperchase installs its application suiteon standard Windows servers, without shared disks:• Both the Copperchase applications and the SafeKit software are installed on
separate Windows servers.
• The Copperchase applications use SafeKit for load balancing, automatic
failover and real-time file replication with zero data lost.

Case study > Software vendor and high availability

www.evidian.com

Copperchase deploys a SafeKit multi-modules cluster and mixes farmand mirror modules
Phase 1: Normal status.
The farm application module is running on both servers 1
and 2. Users of this application module are connected to a
virtual IP address with automatic network load balancing ofuser’s connections between both servers.
“By developing applications
for air traffic control,
Copperchase is in one of
the most critical businessactivities. We absolutely
need our applications to beavailable all the time. We
have found with SafeKit asimple and complete
clustering solution for ourneeds. This software
combines in a single
product load balancing,real time data replication
with no data loss andautomatic failover.
This is why, Copperchase
deploys SafeKit for air
traffic control in airports in
the UK and the 30 countries
where we are present.”
Tony Myers,
Director of Business
Development,Copperchase.

farm module

The mirror application module runs only on server 1. Clientsto this application module are automatically connected tomirror module
server 1 thanks to another primary-secondary virtual IPaddress. SafeKit replicates on server 2, in real time over the network, the files
opened by the application. Only the modifications made by the application arereplicated, thereby limiting the traffic. There are no prerequisites in terms of serverorganization. For example, the files may be on an internal RAID5 disk on server 1
and on a simple disk on server 2.
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 is stored on the secondary server. (This possibility is not offered byproducts that implement asynchronous replication).
Phase 2: Switchover in case of failure.
If server 1 fails, SafeKit ensures switchover to server 2 of both
farm and mirror modules. Switchover timeout is equal to thefailure detection timeout (30 seconds by default) plus theapplication restart time. (There is no timeout for returning or
recovering the file system on the secondary server, as is thecase with shared disk or disk replication solutions).
Phase 3: Failure recovery.
When server 1 is restarted, SafeKit restart the loadbalancing of the farm application module. And SafeKit resynchronizes the files of the mirror application module.
Only the files modified on server 2 when server 1 wasinactive are resynchronized. Server 1 is resynchronizedwithout stopping the mirror application module on server 2.

farm module

mirror module

After this re-synchronization, the system is again highlyavailable. The files are again in mirror mode; the only difference is that the mirror
application module 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 theswitchover manually, with a simple mouse click, or automatically.

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