A cold site recovery can be daunting,
especially for a large complex system like Sterling Selling and
Fulfillment Foundation. At a minimum, you have to procure, install, and
configure all the hardware equipment needed by the application ranging
from network equipment, load balancers, mid-tier and database nodes,
SAN, cabling for the SAN, and so forth.
Next, you have to install and configure all the
system software ranging from the operating system, database management
system, application server, Sterling Selling and
Fulfillment Foundation, and so forth. It is critically important that
the software version and release, and even the same fix packs be installed
the same as the primary data center. Installing different software
versions may result in unexpected behavior.
Next, you have to configure the environment. At
a minimum, this includes:
- Defining all the service, host, and server names
to DNS
- Defining the message queues
- Setting all the configuration and performance parameters
(for example, the operating system kernel parameters, the database
parameters). Again, it is important that these parameters be set to
the same values as the corresponding parameters in the primary site.
- Installing and preparing the SAN including defining
the storage and file systems
- Loading the application database schema
After the infrastructure and environment is available:
- Restore the database from the backup tapes
- Roll forward all the transaction logs to bring
the database up to the latest consistent state
- Configure the application servers (for example,
connection pool)
- Restore the messages from the integration queues
– if you do not have a backup of the messages, all the of the unprocessed
messages in the integration queues are lost
- Install Sterling Selling and
Fulfillment Foundation and reapply all the custom code, extensions, custom
XMLs, and the property files
- Reconfigure the load balancer or proxy to the application
server cluster
- Define the service names to the IP address at the
recovery site
- Establish connections to all the external systems
(for example, credit card companies for credit authorization)
A cold site recovery could easily take days.