What is the impact of the Replicator filling up?
by. Kirk Drake
Many of Ongoing Operations clients use our Replicator Data Vaulting product to both backup and recover their critical data. The solution has been a big success and is currently on its third version. One of the big advantages of the solution is that OGO staff fully monitor and maintain the solution to make sure your data is backed-up, sent off-site, and recoverable. That being said, many clients want to know, “What happens if the Replicator fills up?” To answer that question we need to explore both the preventative maintenance aspect and how we prevent the situation from occurring as well as the impact if it does occur.
Monitoring and Prevention
Low disk space is monitored during our Preventative Maintenance process we perform multiple times a week. We try to keep all the replicators above 20% free space at all times. If it is not, a ticket is created to run a cleanup on the replicator to remove unnecessary files that are no longer part of the current chain. When we cannot clean up the data on the replicator to be above 20%, we notify the client. At this point we begin archiving data and starting new backup chains. We create a ticket in our client portal under the client and send the client an email reporting that the replicator is below 20% free space and will need to be addressed soon. Normally there is lower performance of the replicator to be able to process new files and re-verify the chains every week. When the chains become greater that a year old, this is the symptom of the some of the older replicators (our newest version minimizes this impact better). One major consequence, if OGO wasn’t providing the maintenance, is that backups will not continue if there isn’t enough free space to create the files. We don’t have to worry about this too much unless the new chains aren’t started quickly enough.
Action Steps when out of space
Should the Replicator actually fill up – here are the steps that need to be taken to get things working again:
- Archive the data from replica (Offsite transfers), unless specified by client
- Send drives to client to perform new base images
- Start new base images
- Setup replication of the new chain
- Copy new images to drives
- Copy chains from drives to replica
- Verify all chains are up-to-date and 100%