SIOS SANless clusters

SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring

October 23, 2026

Setting Up Nginx Load Balancer on AWS

Setting Up Nginx Load Balancer on AWS

Setting Up Nginx Load Balancer on AWS

Step 1: Launching EC2 Instances

  1. Navigate to the AWS Management Console and launch two EC2 instances, each in a different AZ within the same region.
  2. Choose an appropriate instance type based on your workload requirements and configure security groups to allow inbound traffic on ports 80 and 443.
  3. Ensure that the instances are provisioned with the latest version of your preferred Linux distribution.

Step 2: Installing Nginx

  1. SSH into each EC2 instance and install Nginx using the package manager (e.g., apt for Ubuntu, yum for CentOS).
  2. Configure Nginx as a load balancer by editing the Nginx configuration file (nginx.conf) to define upstream servers and load balancing algorithm (e.g., round-robin).
  3. Test the Nginx configuration and start the Nginx service on both instances.

Step 3: Configuring DNS and Health Checks

  1. Assign Elastic IP addresses to the EC2 instances for static IP resolution.
  2. Configure DNS records (e.g., A records) to point to the Elastic IPs of the Nginx instances.
  3. Implement health checks to monitor the availability of backend servers and ensure traffic is routed only to healthy instances.
  4. Ensure that any relevant firewalls or security group rules allow traffic on required ports (e.g., HTTP/HTTPS and health check ports).

Enhancing High Availability with SIOS LifeKeeper

Step 1: Understanding SIOS LifeKeeper

SIOS LifeKeeper is a comprehensive solution for achieving high availability (HA) and disaster recovery for critical applications in cloud and hybrid environments. It provides robust application-aware failover protection by combining continuous health monitoring, automated failover orchestration, and multi-layer recovery across physical, virtual, and cloud architectures. In AWS deployments, traditional failover mechanisms relying on Layer 2/3 broadcast or multicast protocols—such as VRRP or keepalived—do not operate natively due to cloud networking constraints. SIOS LifeKeeper solves these limitations by managing virtual overlay IP addresses, dynamic Route 53 DNS updates, or Elastic IP (EIP) reassociations, ensuring robust and seamless failover across Availability Zones without single points of failure.

Step 2: Integrating SIOS LifeKeeper with Nginx

  1. Deploy SIOS LifeKeeper agents on each EC2 instance running Nginx.
  2. Configure SIOS LifeKeeper communication paths between nodes to enable heartbeat monitoring across network interfaces.
  3. Set up a LifeKeeper resource hierarchy to manage the Nginx instances, IP addresses, and underlying dependencies as a highly available cluster.
  4. Configure a Quorum/Witness mechanism (such as an NFS file witness) to avoid split-brain scenarios in two-node cluster setups.

Step 3: Implementing EC2 Automatic Recovery Kit (ARK)

  1. Install the SIOS EC2 Application Recovery Kit (ARK) on both EC2 instances to facilitate automatic instance recovery in the event of failure.
  2. Configure the ARK to monitor EC2 instances and Nginx processes, triggering failover actions when a failure is detected.
  3. Test switchover and failover scenarios using the LifeKeeper administration interface to validate high availability and ensure seamless service continuity.

Conclusion

By deploying Nginx as a load balancer across multiple AWS Availability Zones and integrating it with SIOS LifeKeeper and the SIOS EC2 Application Recovery Kit (ARK), organizations can establish an enterprise-grade, highly available infrastructure tailored for mission-critical workloads. This architecture overcomes cloud networking constraints by automating active-passive failover and dynamic address reassociation, ensuring continuous uptime, data integrity, and seamless service continuity. Supported by application-aware monitoring and robust quorum management, this unified strategy minimizes downtime, optimizes performance, and provides a scalable, resilient foundation for modern digital operations.

Author: Aaron West, Sales Engineer at SIOS

Reproduced with permission from SIOS
October 17, 2026

With Great Power: Cluster Maintenance Best Practices

With Great Power_ Cluster Maintenance Best Practices

With Great Power: Cluster Maintenance Best Practices

In the world of IT infrastructure, uptime is everything. Keeping your users online and functional is the foundation on which most modern businesses run. In a world where downtime is the supervillain, clustering becomes the hero who can save your business from disaster. However, as the title states, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Similar to how heroes of fiction must control their powers to ensure they are not abused or misused, clusters (and the engineers working on them) must be controlled to ensure they are able to save the day when disaster does strike. In this blog, we will discuss some general best practices to keep your cluster prepared to battle a disaster situation. Just like a protagonist, it all starts with the training and maintenance.

Storage Changes in a Clustered Environment

Clusters are a powerful tool; with that power comes additional restrictions that a single system setup does not need to consider. When maintaining your clustered system, you must perform additional validation beyond what is needed for a basic system. For example, provisioning additional storage is a few clicks away through a cloud provider console; however, in a clustered environment, you do not want to jump the gun. A clustered environment with mirrored data will have much stricter requirements for storage than your typical server. Understanding this and how to work with clustered storage is key to ensuring your cluster stays at full strength 24/7. For a detailed overview of proper storage procedures, please feel free to review this technical document:

DataKeeper Volume Resize

Beyond storage, there are further cluster considerations that you should arm your engineers with. Understanding the interplay between clustering and antivirus is key to preventing unwanted quarantine of critical clustering files/processes. Properly documenting system updates and ensuring clustered nodes remain consistent allows for all changes to be well understood by current and future engineers, and prevents problems that may stem from node inconsistencies.

Antivirus Software, Malware, etc. Exclusions for DataKeeper for Windows

Network Changes and Mirror Endpoints

Another major factor in clustering is networking. In order for a cluster to communicate, the network must function properly, and the configured addresses must stay consistent. In a single server environment, changing network infrastructure hardly comes into play, but when working with a clustered setup, all of the nodes must maintain communication on dedicated network paths, and changing those paths requires that you update the cluster configuration. SIOS does provide tools to update these values, but it is important to understand the procedure prior to making any changes.

Learn more about changing mirror end points, here.

To summarize, going from a standard single server setup to a “superhero” cluster is not an instant hands-free solution. Just like any superhero, it requires proper training and maintenance to perform at a “super” level. Careful considerations around any storage, networking, AV, and other system changes will allow for your cluster to stay in tip-top shape to save your clients and business from the wrath of downtime. For further information and training, please feel free to review more blogs, visit our documentation site, complete our online training, or reach out to support@us.sios.com if you are interested in procuring a more comprehensive synchronous training session with a dedicated SIOS engineer.

Author: Connor Toohey, Sr. Product Support Engineer at SIOS Technology

Reproduced with permission from SIOS
October 9, 2026

AI Is Moving Fast. Critical Applications Still Need to Stay Up.

AI Is Moving Fast. Critical Applications Still Need to Stay Up.

AI Is Moving Fast. Critical Applications Still Need to Stay Up.

AI is changing how companies serve customers, analyze information, and get work done. The opportunity is real, and organizations are right to explore it. But as AI projects draw attention and resources, high availability and disaster recovery cannot become yesterday’s priorities.

Customers still expect applications to work when they need them. Employees still need access to the systems that run daily operations. When those systems go down, even briefly, work stops and confidence can suffer. Adding AI to a business does not reduce its dependence on reliable infrastructure. In many cases, it adds new dependencies to protect.

Past Outages Offer an Important Reminder

Past outages make that clear. In one well-documented incident, a failure in storage infrastructure used by Cloudflare’s Workers KV service disrupted several Cloudflare products for over two hours. The affected services included access and security tools as well as Workers AI. One underlying dependency had consequences across a wide range of services.

Similarly, a major AWS service disruption in its Northern Virginia region began with a DynamoDB DNS issue and went on to affect other services, including EC2 instance launches and some network load balancers. The disruption illustrated how problems can spread through the services an application relies on, even when its own servers remain healthy.

These incidents reinforce the importance of understanding application dependencies and preparing for failures across them. A recovery environment that relies on the same unavailable service may leave the business facing the same problem.

Keep Availability in the Conversation

As organizations plan AI investments, they should also revisit a few practical questions:

  • Which applications are essential? Identify the systems that support customers, employees, and daily operations.
  • How much downtime can the business tolerate? Set clear recovery goals based on business impact.
  • What does each application depend on? Include databases, storage, networking, authentication, and external services.
  • Have failover and recovery procedures been tested? Confirm that applications can return to service within the time the business needs.

Those questions apply to established applications and new AI workloads alike. High availability helps keep applications running through certain failures, while disaster recovery prepares organizations to restore operations after more extensive disruptions. Both require ongoing attention as environments change.

Build Innovation on Reliable Systems

An AI initiative may promise faster decisions or better customer experiences, but those benefits depend on the availability of the systems behind it. Protecting uptime deserves a place in the same planning and budget conversations as innovation.

Companies can move forward with AI while continuing to invest in resilience. Keeping high availability and disaster recovery a priority helps ensure that both new capabilities and everyday business operations remain dependable.

Author: Ben Roy, Marketing Program Manager at SIOS

Reproduced with permission from SIOS
October 4, 2026

What Is High Availability (HA)?

What Is High Availability (HA)

What Is High Availability (HA)?

There are so many acronyms in the world today; sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with what they all mean, especially for everyday users without a technical background.  This particular acronym, HA, has been around for many decades now.  But what does it mean in an easy to understand language?   HA stands for High Availability.  HA means that the computers that run a company’s  business (that the business and customers depend upon) are up and running when customers access them every day, any time of the day or night. For example,  you try to access your bank account to check your balance or deposit a check electronically by using the app on your phone or on your laptop.  But you receive an error message that says the system cannot be reached and to try again later. You may think this error is occurring only for you, so you reboot your laptop and restart your phone.  But you receive the same error: “the system cannot be reached”.  What does this mean? This means that the bank’s computer appears to be down, and you’re unable to access it! You might be wondering—how can the bank’s computer system be offline? This is a potential outcome when businesses fail to implement high availability (HA) solutions for the systems that power their operations.

How HA works

So, how does High Availability actually work in real life? Let’s break it down.  HA can be implemented with software that runs on the business computer or hardware that is built into the business computer.  The focus here is to describe at a high level what the HA software provides on business computers.  HA’s job is to keep computers up and running all of the time so businesses and their customers can always access their data and information. How does HA keep computers up and running all of the time? HA has several key components.

  • Monitoring between the Computers – With HA, typically there are two computers that work together to ensure that one of them is always up and running.  Each computer communicates with the other computer at a configurable interval and asks, “Are you there”? If there is no answer to “Are you there?”, then the HA software decides to have the other computer run the business and implements that change automatically, without human intervention, in real time.
  • Monitoring the Applications running on the Computers –  Businesses rely on a variety of applications and critical programs running on their computers to operate effectively.  Monitoring is like the primary computer asking each application, “Are you okay?” If the applications and critical programs answer “No, not okay”, then the HA software attempts to correct the problem on the primary computer.  If the “No, not okay” status continues on the primary computer, then the HA software automatically decides to have the other computer run the business and implements that change in real time.

Value Justification

Now that we know what HA is and how it works at a high level, the value is easy to see.  HA hardware,  software, and architectures provide a way for businesses to keep their systems highly available, up and running,  and not have to worry about manually monitoring the systems to make sure they are up. Without HA, businesses risk downtime, losing customers, and losing sales. No business can survive in today’s world with these issues.  Businesses rely heavily on their computers, applications, services, and data to operate without interruption, as downtime directly impacts their profitability. When systems are unavailable, companies not only lose revenue but also risk losing customers. If customers cannot access the services or data they need in a timely manner, they are likely to turn to competitors, an outcome no business wants to face!

Author: Sandi Hamilton, Director Product Support Engineering at SIOS

Reproduced with permission from SIOS
September 27, 2026

Surviving the Friday Night Crash: From Scrappy Bare Metal to Seamless Data Replication

Surviving the Friday Night Crash From Scrappy Bare Metal to Seamless Data Replication

Surviving the Friday Night Crash: From Scrappy Bare Metal to Seamless Data Replication

It was my sophomore year of high school. It was late on a Friday night, and like most teenagers, I was zoned out in front of the TV. Then, the glow of the screen was interrupted by my phone lighting up. A buzz. Then another. Then a relentless, vibrating chorus that could only mean one thing: Discord was blowing up, the support tickets were flooding in, and the servers were down. Again.

When Server Downtime Became Part of the Business

At that point, catastrophic downtime had practically become a feature of my daily life. Game hosting is the Wild West of infrastructure. Between targeted DDoS attacks from rival servers, inexperienced customers accidentally nuking their own configurations, and the inevitable hardware failures of budget bare-metal rigs, chaos was just part of the business model. While my classmates were worrying about biology tests, I was frantically SSH-ing into servers at 2 AM, praying a hard reboot would bring the nodes back online.

Eventually, that constant chaos started taking a heavy toll. Personally, the sheer burnout of being a one-man, 24/7 incident response team was exhausting. But from a business perspective, the bleeding was even worse. Every minute of downtime meant paying out SLA credits from a razor-thin margin. It meant hemorrhaging organic growth, losing prospective leads, and dealing with justifiably frustrated gamers. I was learning the hard way that downtime isn’t just a technical glitch; it is a massive financial liability.

Searching for a Better High Availability Strategy

I knew something had to change. I spent hours reading up on enterprise architecture, but as a solo teenager running a bootstrapped operation, my high availability strategy was essentially a collection of duct-tape bash scripts. I found ways to make rudimentary failovers work, but I could never get a reliable, affordable way to ensure true data replication.

I eventually handed over the keys, selling the hosting business to a competitor just before trading my server racks for college lecture halls. But as I progressed through my degree, the operational scars of those frantic outages never faded. I couldn’t stop thinking about the infrastructure, the downtime, and the massive tech giants that effortlessly survived the exact failures that used to cripple my network. I worked relentlessly to understand that gap, which ultimately drove me to land my internship here at SIOS.

Discovering SIOS DataKeeper and Seamless Data Replication

Walking into this engineering environment felt like stepping into an alternate reality where my teenage infrastructure nightmares had already been solved. When I first saw SIOS DataKeeper in action, it was a genuine moment of awe. It was exactly what I had been searching for all those years ago.

Watching edits on one machine move to another seamlessly, and then just work exactly as intended during a simulated failover, was incredible. Seeing how effortlessly it integrates with everything else to make downtime a thing of the past proved to me that the perfect infrastructure I used to dream about actually exists.

From Scrappy Infrastructure to Mission-Critical High Availability

Today, my role bridges the gap between my scrappy roots and elite industry standards. I am directly on the front lines in tech support, ensuring our software and our customers’ architectures run flawlessly. Every single day, I get to help businesses keep their mission-critical data online.

There is an incredibly profound, full-circle satisfaction I feel in that. When I help a customer smooth out their high availability setup, I think back to that solo teenager scrambling in the dark on a Friday night. It is an absolutely amazing feeling to know I am no longer just wishing for a safety net. I am actively helping other businesses make rock-solid, panic-free infrastructure a reality.

Author: Brit Weinstein, Customer Experience Engineer Intern at SIOS

Reproduced with permission from SIOS
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