# Best Practices for CommCell High Availability

To achieve service availability and business continuity, you can configure the Commvault software for high availability of individual Commvault components.

## CommServe Server

For the CommServe server, the purpose of high availability, which is achieved by using Live Sync, is disaster recovery, with quick failover to a standby host or hosts if a failure occurs.

Standby hosts are frequently and incrementally synchronized to minimize data loss and to reduce downtime. When a failover occurs, proxy clients route requests to the standby host. The use of proxy clients reduces the need for manual intervention and name resolution/DNS changes. When the disaster recovery is complete, production failover and failback operations simplify business continuity.

For more information, see CommServe LiveSync For High Availability Disaster Recovery.

## MediaAgent

A MediaAgent provides access to the storage target and performs indexing and deduplication operations on the data that is ingested from the source clients. In general, when you configure multiple MediaAgents to perform I/O on the storage target, the operations (such as backups and restores) proceed even if one of the MediaAgents is not available. The Commvault GridStor allows you to configure multiple MediaAgents.

Commvault also offers HyperScale X, which is a compute/storage converged platform that includes the MediaAgents and storage in a redundant set of nodes. HyperScale X also allows for scale-out of storage and compute-on-demand and provides high availability.

## Web Server

The Commvault Web Server provides access to the Command Center. Access to the Command Center is very important for performing data management operations. Installing two or more Web Servers allows for high availability and load balancing and operations can proceed despite localized/site failovers and other disruptions.

## Critical Application Backups

Protecting critical application data at all times is important.

For database workloads, you can use the Commvault disk caching backup feature. When you use this feature, log backups continue even if the CommServe computer is down for maintenance or connectivity to the CommServe computer is disrupted. For more information, see Disk Caching for Frequent Log Backups.

For SaaS applications (such as Office 365 and Salesforce), you must configure a client group so that SaaS application backups can continue even if some data access nodes are unavailable. When a data access node is down, the backup operation automatically selects the next available node, so that you meet backup SLAs. To learn how to configure the application, go to the Commvault documentation for the application.

## Commvault Software Maintenance

You must regularly update the Commvault software and install all security updates to adhere to your company's security policies.

During maintenance operations, such as patching the production CommServe server to the most recent feature release, you can activate the production maintenance failover mode so that the standby CommServe server can handle service requests for restore operations.

For HyperScale X, schedule patching of the backup software or Installing Operating System Updates on Existing Nodes. The rolling update mechanism can be enabled to ensure that the system remains operational.

## External Applications and Cloud, Hardware, and Network

In addition to the configurations and recommendations for high availability of Commvault components, you must also configure the underlying systems including system hardware and network systems for high availability. You must also establish better throughput access of data with external applications and cloud service providers to perform backup and recovery operations to meet SLAs.

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