Data Protection

 View Only

Deploy a Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum in a fraction of the time using a pre-configured Virtual Machine Image now available in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace

By Jonathan De La Torre posted 02-28-2022 13:49

  

Introduction

As cloud technologies continue to expand, it’s important that your business leverages cloud technologies to ensure high availability for your products. Although having a physical storage system serve as a quorum at a third site increases redundancy, using global-active device cloud quorum gives you access to more sites increasing the availability of your solution. Additionally, you no longer need to pay for maintenance and deployment of the third storage system because all computing resources are hosted in the cloud and you are only charged on-demand for hardware usage.

Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum

Global-active device cloud quorum is an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) available through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace that streamlines the configuration of a virtual machine as an iSCSI target to serve as a quorum. Our solution leverages Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to deploy a VM on the cloud that automatically configures itself upon launch requiring little user interaction for the VM setup. As a result, deployment is quick and easy, and it supports all AWS regions across the globe. Additionally, global-active device cloud quorum includes a simple-to-use user interface for making configuration changes to the quorum. This offering is free of charge for software usage and you only pay Amazon Web Services on-demand for hardware usage.



Watch this video to learn how to locate and deploy global-active device cloud quorum on AWS: Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum on AWS

Global-Active Device (GAD)

A quorum disk monitors global-active device (GAD) pair volumes and can be located in a third, external storage system or in an iSCSI-attached host server. The quorum disk acts as a heartbeat for the GAD pair, with both storage systems accessing the quorum disk to check on each other. A communication failure between systems results in a series of checks with the quorum disk to identify the problem for the system unable to receive host updates.



For an overview of the global-active device features, components, and capabilities, visit our support site at: Overview of Global-Active Device

Terms to Know

Quorum Disk: A storage system or iSCSI-attached host server used to monitor GAD pair volumes.

Global-Active Device (GAD): A synchronous data replication solution that creates and maintains remote copies of data volumes.

High Availability: The ability of a system to ensure a high level of uptime performance for an extended period.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI): A template used to create a virtual machine.

Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2): A web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud.

The Pros and Cons of Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum

Pros:

  • Reduces the cost of global-active device by removing the cost of purchase and maintenance of a third physical storage system
  • Provides a High Availability solution by using state-of-the-art AWS data centers
  • Supports regions in the US, Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, and South America
  • Streamlines configuration and setup requiring minimal user interaction
  • Manages the quorum through a simple user interface
  • Includes no cost software
  • Requires only on-demand costs for hardware used in the cloud
  • Ensures 99.9% availability for each Amazon EC2 region

View our Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum in AWS Implementation Guide for more details: Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum in AWS

Tips and Reminders

Tip#1: When inputting text into the user data field make sure to follow the following format:

#!/bin/bash

/home/ec2-user/quorum_setup/quorum_setup.sh [IQN#1] [IQN#2]

**Note: Specify the shebang on the first line followed by enter. On the second line, enter the name of the path followed by a space and the IQN number. The delimiter for specifying IQN is a space.

Resources

Link to document library: Global Active Device Cloud Quorum Documentation Library – Hitachi Vantara Knowledge

Conclusion

Using global-active device cloud quorum, it’s very simple to transition to a cloud architecture for your GAD quorum and ensure your business is protected with a high-availability solution that uses state of the art data centers across many regions all over the globe.

Visit the AWS Marketplace to view global-active device cloud quorum our new cloud offering that removes the need for a third physical storage system and streamlines the configuration upon launch: AWS Marketplace: Global-Active Device Cloud Quorum (amazon.com)
5 comments
67 views

Permalink

Comments

11-06-2022 14:16

A Global-active device (GAD) enables companies to create and maintain synchronous, remote copies of data volumes.  Extending this to the cloud and using GAD cloud quorum would ensure that business data is protected with a high-availability solution leveraging the power of AWS.

05-02-2022 03:47

Excellent

04-25-2022 08:21

Cool

04-18-2022 12:12

Thanks for the wondeful writeup. It will help us a lot.

04-14-2022 03:46

THis is a brilliant tech. Thank you!