OpenVMS Boot Camp 2015
 
Disaster tolerance with OpenVMS, Part 1 of 2

Track: High Availability

Speaker
, Technical Director, XDelta Limited


Description
This session will give an overview of design objectives and implementation techniques for building disaster tolerance with OpenVMS. The key aspect of a disaster tolerance with Open VMS is that it provides resilience against failure and data loss, even while being worked on. This requires the design to cater for maintenance and change while the system is in use. The overall system may have a design life far in excess of the hardware platform and may need to expand and change several times whilst in operational use. An additional challenge is that most disaster tolerant systems are not "green field" new systems, but instead replace existing systems. Furthermore, the system being put into service will itself be replaced at some point in the future. In many cases the overall design and project planning is driven by the need for seamless transition without disruption. To successfully design and implement a disaster tolerant cluster under such circumstances requires a holistic view of the complete system encompassing the applications, software components, hardware, operating system, networking, storage, operational procedures and the business environment. The OpenVMS operating system is both well architected and extremely capable. With its multi-site clustering capabilities it is well suited to such complex scenarios. A number of examples will be used to illustrate specific points where the capabilities of the OpenVMS operating system have proved invaluable.

Experience Level
Intermediate