On Jul 27, 10:11 am, colw...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi guys.
>
> I hope you are able to assist me.
>
> We are considering investing in Hummingbird eDocs as our Document
> Management System. The functionality looks good, but it does not meet
> our infrastructure requirements.
>
> We have two geographically located offices (London and Dubai). We
> would like to implement a full Disaster Recovery and High Availability
> solution based on the following requirements:
>
> Both locations should have an exact copy of the SQLServer2005 data
> (used by the DM server) and the documents stored in the content
> repository (SAN). The replication should be as close to real-time as
> possible.
>
> This will allow users in both locations to work on local copies of the
> documents, and any changes to either side are replicated to the remote
> location. In essence, this is an ACTIVE ACTIVE setup, opposed to an
> ACTIVE PASSIVE.
>
> If something serious happens in one of the locations (the server room
> burns down for instance) the remote office will have all documents and
> the users will be able to continue working on them as per usual (with
> a slight lag due to latency).
>
> It has been suggested that what we want is not possible, and that we
> should use a centralised architecture, where both offices reference
> the same database and document store, and install a caching server
> between the remote location and the master server to improve the users
> access to the documents. It sounds like an option, but does not give
> us a sufficient disaster recovery solution, because if the master
> servers died, the offices will not have access to documents.
>
> I would really appreciate any advice or solution you may have to our
> requirement.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
> Regards,
> Col

Hi Col,

Technically speaking, what you are asking for is not impossible,
though it could get quite expensive to do it in the way you are
looking to do it.

It looks like disaster recovery is a major required functionality, so
from what you said above, Hummingbird eDocs installed in one location
with caching server does not seem to support the functionality you
require. Explore other ways of implementing disaster recovery, and try
not to mix it up with requiring "fast" access.

One problem with your approach is that "replication" of documents does
not exactly make it clear which version has priority over the other
when 2 or more users simultaneously edit/modify a document. If you
have 2 or more "local" copies being edited simultaneously, then which
one is the "real McCoy" to replicate from/to?

There could be relatively low-tech ways to implement that setup you
want, though the work there may be outside of Hummingbird eDocs - in
fact, the EDMS may not even know that it is being replicated, and an
external name resolution server resolves an address to either this
server or that one based on availability. That is how web-based
services providers implement that... when you go to hotmail.com or
google.com, some server is switching you back and forth between
applications.

Mainly, you may need to define what exactly you mean by real-time
access... and what you mean by disaster recovery, and how fast you can
be up and running after a major outage with different options, and
weigh it against the cost to build out the solution in the ideal case
against the business cost and benefit of taking it down a notch.

What I would do if I was in your place is to see if both locations are
equally important/equally busy/populated, where most of the document
users sit, how often documents are modified, how often documents may
be modified simultaneously, whether an offsite replication with a
certain time lag is acceptable, and whether you can have a disaster
mitigation plan in place of full replication.

Which other EDMS did you consider?

Regards,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
http://www.ideatechnosoft.com