Vertica disaster recovery plan options

Ramunas_Balukon

Hello, 
would like to start discussion about companies practises with Vertica disaster recovery plans.

decided not to use native Vertica backup restore vbr.py utility because need identical topology when restoring database. Its expensive to have a separate identical cluster for restores only.

I think about those 3 options for disaster recovery solutions:

1. Dual load - Active/Active approach. No need to have identical clusters. Need additional effort for ETL and releases. Is practical for 24X7 ie when one cluster is down for maintenance, upgrading or so on. I hope extra licence for dual load is not needed? 

2. Develop a script and periodically export database objects (or object partitions) to txt/gzip files. No need additional licence. Unable to run "incremental" backups. If object DDL changes need to rerun backup.

3. Develop a script and copy periodically database objects (or object partitions) to separate Vertica cluster. Using "EXPORT TO VERTICA" using filter clause to select only latest partitions. Unable to run "incremental" backups. Same question about licencing.

Does anybody uses any of these approach or can recomend smth else?


Thanks, 
Ramunas

norbert_krupa

With regards to licensing on all your points, you don't need an additional license provided that you're using the secondary cluster for DR. There are some minor caveats to that, but you should speak to your technical representative.

Dual load is the most common DR strategy. In this strategy, you have a primary cluster, and a DR cluster which are ingesting the same data.

Perhaps you're not aware, but you do not need an exact topology for the native backup/restore if you're doing object level backups.

The more important question you should be asking is "What is my SLA?" Basically, how quickly do you need to recover in the event of a disaster. The other factor is how much data loss (if any) is acceptable?

The documentation covers these strategies at a high level.