Stories for IT Operations
Disaster Recovery with Red Hat Satellite

Dave Russell, Senior Solutions Architect - UK & Ireland

Red Hat Solutions Architect Dave Russell was faced with a challenge: Build a secure, high-availability web application platform that could withstand an extreme hardware failure incident. Dave's client, an R&D and IT Security organization in the UK, had highly demanding security needs. One hundred and fifty servers across three geographic sites with a multi-tier application architecture meant that new ground had to be broken to improve manageability, maximize uptime, and ensure fault tolerance. Given the customer's application was based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the natural answer was Red Hat Satellite systems management.

Working with Red Hat Consulting, Dave and the team architected a brilliant solution: Two Satellite servers synchronized with daily database snapshots feeding three Red Hat Proxy servers (one per physical site) which each managed 50 servers with the Satellite provisioning module. The operating system for each server build was stripped down to the bare necessities, RPM's were created for all configuration files and custom software on the customer's platform. But theory is often better on paper than in real life. To validate the system, Dave's client had to fully test out the management platform. All 150 servers at three sites were erased down to bare metal. From scratch, the Proxy server was rebuilt which then proceeded to rebuild the production and application servers. Within five minutes, the Linux operating system was laid down. Within ten minutes, the entire application layer including application servers, database servers and customer applications were deployed. From end to end, fifteen minutes had elapsed from erase to rebuild, a smashing success.

While Satellite's disaster-recovery capabilities were astounding there were additional administrative benefits. Dave's customer was able to deploy patches in a very controlled fashion across the customer's environment, ensuring the latest security patches were installed in a timely fashion. Updates, training, and documentation were readily available through Red Hat as opposed to any DIY solutions the organization could develop internally. The extensibility of Red Hat Satellite's APIs also allowed for use of existing scripts, custom reporting, and scheduled delivery of errata--key customer requirements. High-value IT resources were focused on driving business needs rather than maintaining a cobbled-together management solution. In the end, Dave and Red Hat Consulting provided the customer with a solution that delivered on all of its disaster recovery requirements and more.

To learn more about Red Hat Satellite and Red Hat Consulting contact your sales representative or explore redhat.com.