Case Study: Jack Henry & Associates Automates Application Deployments Through Crises With Disaster Recovery Architecture and Release Automation

1. World®
’16
Case Study: Jack Henry and Associates Automates
Application Deployments Through Crises With
DR Architecture and Release Automation
Christopher James Farrar - Adv. Sys. / Network Admin. - Jack Henry and Associates
DO5X43S
DEVOPS

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The content provided in this CA World 2016 presentation is intended for informational purposes only and does not form any type
of warranty. The information provided by a CA partner and/or CA customer has not been reviewed for accuracy by CA.
For Informational Purposes Only
Terms of this Presentation

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Abstract
Jack Henry and Associates, Inc. (JHA) provides more than 300 products and services that enable
its customers to process financial transactions, automate their businesses and succeed in an
increasingly competitive marketplace.
As the company streamlines its everyday application deployment with CA Release Automation,
disaster recovery has become a major concern to make sure that deployment of the different
applications continues in the event of natural disasters, attacks or infrastructure failures. JHA
developed a disaster recovery strategy, where the supporting files and systems for release
automation were set up and maintained in a different data center.
This session will discuss the process and the challenges JHA encountered while implementing its
disaster recovery architecture, and the resulting solution that ensures business continuity, even
in the most disastrous of circumstances.
Christopher
James Farrar
Jack Henry and
Associates
Adv. Sys. / Network
Admin

4. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Dates contained in this presentation are provided as estimates only and can be
changed at any time at the sole discretion of Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. This
information may not be incorporated into any contract and should not be relied
upon in making purchasing decisions.
HANK YO FOR THE
OPPORTUNITY TO
SHARE JHA’S STORY
Legal Disclaimer

5. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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What’s My Story?
Chris Farrar
Advanced Systems/
Network Administrator
for Jack Henry and
Associates
Current Role - Release
Automation SME
§ Work with development/ Operations
teams to engineer RA deployments
§ Release Process design and
DevOps advisor
Previous Experience
§ Enterprise deployment automation
and scripting
§ Windows XP upgrade for retail
1200+ client environment

6. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Importance of Disaster Recovery to JHA
What are the business drivers?
Business
continuity is
our primary
business
driver
Since
CA Release
Automation
deploys code
quickly and
efficiently, it
is critical to a
DR strategy
JHA needs to
be prepared to
stay in a DR
scenario for an
extended
period of time,
this includes
updates
JHA is prepared for the
worst case scenario in a
major disaster event. If
there are issues with the
secondary site then we
are prepared to re-build
a production or DR site
on the fly

7. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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How Does Jack Henry Use
CA Release Automation

8. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Release Automation Adoption
Card Processing Solutions
Release team is responsible
for coordinating release
activities for dozens of
applications
These applications span
Windows, Linux and
Mainframe platforms
Deployment
process varies
greatly
We look to CA
Release Automation as
a way to centralize and
standardize
deployments across the
various applications
and platforms.

9. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Release Automation Adoption – Current State
A Work in Progress
§ We currently deploy four applications via CA Release Automation
§ SharePoint Dashboarding
§ Limited Reporting capabilities at this time
CA Release Automation Activity
§ Deploy binaries
§ Notifications
§ Transformation of configuration files from environment to environment
§ Deploy Database scripts
§ Rollback
§ Approvals

10. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Release Automation Adoption – Flagship App
Customers use this web application
as a means to monitor ATM usage,
state and profitability.
Web Portal for ATM Monitoring

11. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Release Automation Adoption – Results So Far
Since using CA Release Automation for web portal application deployment
Deployment
times reduced
(less than five
minutes start
to finish)
Eliminates
Human Error
Scripted
notifications
Archived data
for reporting
purposes and
audit

12. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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What Is the Problem and How Do We Solve It?

13. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Problem/ Solution – HA Architecture
Image taken from CA Wiki at
https://docops.ca.com/ca-release-automation/5-5-
2/en/installation/install-to-provide-high-availability
HA
architecture
was supported
by CA out of
box

14. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Problem/ Solution – Single Points of Failure
Image taken from CA Wiki at
https://docops.ca.com/ca-release-automation/5-5-
2/en/installation/install-to-provide-high-availability
Single points
of failure at
Database
server and
Repository
server

15. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Problem/ Solution – Jack Henry Goals for DR
Jack Henry standard requirement – all applications must have
a DR counter part to fail over to
Need to be able to deploy production applications/ updates in
the event of a total site failure
§ RA functionality
§ Artifacts
§ Access to agents

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We’ve Identified the Single Points of Failure…
How Do We Get Around Them?

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Architecture
Overview –
DR RAC, SQL,
Repository

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How Do We Synchronize SQL and Repository Servers?
Replicate

19. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Replication/ Synchronization Methods
DFSR for Nexus Repository
%ReleaseAutomationServerRepository%sonatype-worknexus
Copy Don’t Copy
Conf Indexer
Logs Timelineindex
Plugin-repository
Storage

20. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Replication/ Synchronization Methods
SQL Replication
Log shipping
§ More of a manual method but other more automated methods available
(SQL AlwaysOn)
§ Due to infrequency of need for SQL failover (twice annually)
§ Adds several manual steps to DR failover procedure
§ Disable log shipping jobs
§ Script executed to pull DR Database out of Read-only

21. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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What Happened When We Flipped the Switch?

22. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Failover Testing Results – 1st Round
§ CA Release Automation
worked but could not
deploy…
§ MMOPPSRADEXEC01
cannot connect to DR RAC
§ “Utility” server type needs
to be changed from RAC to
DR RAC
§ Usual permission / access
issues

23. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Failover Testing Results – 1st Round
Lessons Learned
Opened up connectivity to Dev
execution server from DR RAC
Included Utility server change
over in procedure

24. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Failover Testing Results – 2nd Round
§ Able to deploy!
§ Dynamic Duration
reporting parameter
references CA Release
Automation database,
this will need to be
updated
§ Process adjustments

25. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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Failover Testing Results – Future State
Scripted
solution for
changing
utility server
type
More
automated
SQL
replication
Integrating
management
servers to
HA

26. © 2016 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
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CA Release Automation
can now deploy web
portal application and
others in the event of a
total site failure at the
primary data center.
Epilogue
If the DR environment for Portal is not fully
updated, then updates could be deployed quickly
and efficiently.
If the DR environment is destroyed and new servers
were created, Portal could be deployed quickly.

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Questions?

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