Recovery procedures for service group dependencies

Service group dependencies have special requirements and limitations for disaster recovery configuration and for actions to be taken in a disaster recovery scenario.

See Supported disaster recovery configurations for service group dependencies.

The procedure and requirements for bringing service group dependencies online at the secondary site depends on their configuration: soft, firm, or hard.

In general, if a child or parent remains online at the primary site, you take it offline before you bring the child and parent service groups online in the correct order on the secondary site.

An exception is the RVG service group, used for Volume Replicator replication, which the wizard creates with an online, local, hard dependency. The RVG group remains online at the primary site in all cases and should be left online at the primary site.

The following tables show the recovery requirements if a child or parent service group fails at the primary site and is unable to fail over on the primary site, thus requiring the secondary site to be brought online.

Using a scenario of a parent and one child, the following table shows the expected results and necessary actions you must take for an online, local, soft dependency link.

Table: Online, local, soft dependency link

Failure condition

Result

Action required (sequentially)

The child service group fails

  • The parent remains online on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the child service group only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

  • Primary site: Manually take the parent service group offline at the primary site. Leave the RVG group online.

  • Secondary site: Bring the parent and child service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).

The parent service group fails

  • The child remains online on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the parent only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

  • Primary site: Manually take the child service group offline at the primary site. Leave the RVG group online.

  • Secondary site: Bring the service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).

Using a scenario of a parent and one child, the following table shows the expected results and necessary actions you must take for an online, local, firm dependency link.

Table: Online, local, firm dependency link

Failure condition

Result

Action required (sequentially)

The child service group fails

  • The parent goes offline on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the child service group only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

Secondary site: Bring the service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).

Leave the RVG group online at the primary site.

The parent service group fails

  • The child remains online on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the parent only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

  • Primary site: Manually take the child service group offline at the primary site. Leave the RVG group online.

  • Secondary site: Bring the service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).

Using a scenario of a parent and one child, the following table shows the expected results and necessary actions you must take for an online, local, hard dependency link.

Table: Online, local, hard dependency link

Failure condition

Result

Action required (sequentially)

The child service group fails

  • The parent goes offline on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the child service group only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

Secondary site: Bring the service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).

Do not take the RVG group offline at the primary site.

The parent service group fails

  • The child remains online on the primary site.

  • An alert notification at the secondary site occurs for the parent only.

  • The RVG group remains online.

  • Primary site: Manually take the child service group offline at the primary site. Leave the RVG group online.

  • Secondary site: Bring the service groups online in the appropriate order (child first, then parent).