Adding a second instance of App volumes for DR

[D81]

Hi

I've just deployed a new App volumes instance on a customer. The instance has 2 app volumes servers that works to provide HA.

The customer has also request to install a second App volumes instance on a secondary site for DR scenarios.

As you know App volumes allow to sync instances between sites by sharing a "man in the middle" storage that must be visible for the hosts of both sites. In that storage the App volumes source instance will push the packages, etc and the App volumes target instance will read and copy it to its own datastore.

So the first question is: On the source Instance I can see that you can modify the name and URL, I guess here I must set it to the loadbalance FQDN of the source instance. Is that correct?

 

Second question is: I have seen that I can sync not only packages but also the "asignments", so in case of a DR on site A you will have all the configs on site B. At that point, how should I configure the App volumes agent to point to site B?

This is the way I plan it to do it:

• Site A - Load balance for App Volumes instance (source): APPVOL-A.mydomain.local
• Site B - Load balance for App Volumes instance (target): APPVOL-B.mydomain.local

So based on that:

• The gold images configured on site A will have App Volumes agent that points into APPVOL-A.mydomain.local so they will allways use those site resources.
• The gold images configured on site B will have App Volumes agent that points into APPVOL-B.mydomain.local so they will allways use those site resources.

DR workflow:

1. For daily use, the users will use VDI pools from site A so all the packages and resources will be provisioned from there.
2. In case of a DR on site A, the users will connect to site B pools so when they open their VDI sessions the App Vol agent on those desktops will be pointing to site B instance so all the resources will be provisioned from there.
3. At the moment site A is restored, the users will log back to site A and will continue as usual.

If the previous concept is correct the administrators task would be only to modify the App vol Agent on the gold image to point it to the correct target on site B each time they copy a gold image from site A to B.

Is that correct? Is there a better way to do it? 

Thanks in advance!