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Accounting Repository Availability and Continuity Plan

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Back to main page: Services Availability Continuity Plans

Introduction

This page reports on the Availability and Continuity Plan for the Accounting Repository and it is the result of the risks assessment conducted for this service: a series of risks and treats has been identified and analysed, along with the correspondent countermeasures currently in place. Whenever a countermeasure is not considered satisfactory for either avoiding or reducing the likelihood of the occurrence of a risk, or its impact, it is agreed with the service provider a new treatment for improving the availability and continuity of the service. The process is concluded with an availability and continuity test.

Last Next
Risks assessment 2018-07-06 2019 July
Av/Co plan and test - -

Hardware HA Configuration

The Accounting Repository runs on a dedicated physical machine running in the STFC RAL Data Centre. It is powered via the generator-backed UPS.

  • Database and file system are backed up every 24 hours to tape storage. Database binary logs are kept for 14 Days and are included in the tape backup.
  • Server hardware is covered by Dell “ProSupport Plus” with 4Hour mission critical support that ensures that service can be restored in minimum time.
  • In a disaster recovery situation, the latest database backup out the full backups can be recovered from tape and then the binlogs can be applied to do “Point in Time Recovery” of the database. Additionally up to three days worth of accounting messages can be cached on the EGI message brokers which can then be retrieved once service is restored.

Performances

The performances reports in terms of Availability and Reliability are produced by ARGO on an almost real time basis and they are also collected every 6 months into the Documentation Database (last period July 2017 - December 2017.

In the OLA it was agreed the following performances targets, on a monthly basis:

  • Availability: 99%
  • Reliability 99%

Over the past years, the Accounting Portal hadn't particular Av/Co issues highlighted by the performances that need to be further investigated.

Risks assessment and management

For more details, please look at the google spreadsheet. We will report here a summary of the assessment.

Risks analysis

Risk id Risk description Affected components Established measures Risk level Expected duration of downtime / time for recovery Comment
1 Service unavailable / loss of data due to hardware failure All Database and filesystem are backed up every 24 hours to tape storage. Database binary logs are kept for 14 Days and are included in the tape backup.

Server hardware is covered by Dell “ProSupport Plus” with 4Hour mission critical support that ensures that service can be restored in minimum time. In a disaster recovery situation, the latest database backup out the full backups can be recovered from tape and then the binlogs can be applied to do “Point in Time Recovery” of the database.

Low up to 8 hours (1 working day) the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
2 Service unavailable / loss of data due to software failure Any Various types of monitoring in place. Low One to two working hours the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
3 service unavailable / loss of data due to human error Any Backups available. Administrator documentation. Training. Low up to 8 hours (1 working day) the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
4 service unavailable for network failure (Network outage with causes external of the site) APEL-SSM receiver and sender Up to three days worth of accounting messages can be cached on the EGI message brokers which can then be retrieved once service is restored. Low Close to zero, less than one hour. the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
5 Unavailability of key technical and support staff (holidays period, sickness, ...) Any As well as having two staff in the APEL team, administration of the service can also be covered by GOCDB staff and, to a limited extent, other staff within the department. Low Within the OLA targets for operational actions

Longer periods in case of bugs or maintenance (one week) because not all the personnel can develop patches to the code.

the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
6 Major disruption in the data centre. Fire, flood or electric failure for example All Fire suppression systems and generator backed UPS Low 1-2 weeks, the time to deploy recover operational status at CESGA or the service to another resource centre partner of the NGI the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
7 Major security incident. The system is compromised by external attackers and needs to be reinstalled and restored. Daily backup are executed. Backup is stored in a separate system and can be restored in another system Low up to 8 hours (1 working day) the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable
8 (D)DOS attack. The service is unavailable because of a coordinated DDOS. APEL-SSM receiver Authentication and authorisation required to send messages via the brokers and messages are additionally checked when received at the Repository Low up to 8 hours (1 working day) the measures already in place are considered satisfactory and risk level is acceptable

Outcome

The level of all the identified risks is acceptable and the countermeasures already adopted are considered satisfactory

Availability and Continuity test

The proposed A/C test will focus on a recovery scenario: the service is supposed to have been disrupted and needs to be reinstalled from scratch. Typically this covers the risks 1,2, and 7. The last backup of the data will be used for restoring the service, verifying how much information will be lost, and the time spent will be measured.

Performing this test will be useful to spot any issue in the recovery procedures of the service.

Test details

references in the RT ticket 14308

10:45 CEST -> poweroff of the original machine (accounting-devel-next)
11:05 CEST -> Power on for the template (minimal) machine for recovery
12:00 CEST -> Data recovery completed
12:10 CEST -> Boot restoration and miscelaneus comprobations.
12:15 CEST -> Recovered machine rebooted and services on line

The recovery took about 70 minutes.

Revision History

Version Authors Date Comments

Alessandro Paolini 2018-07-06 first draft, discussing with the provider