Date: June 8, 2018
Tags: High Availability, high availability cluster solution
Improve Ordering Process with High Availability Cluster Solution
The Japan Contact Lens Association has an online ordering system that takes in orders from dealers to manufacturers and agents all year round. SCSK Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as SCSK) manages this system. They added SCSK’s infrastructure cloud service “USiZE Shared Model” with an operating rate of 99.99%. At the same time, they included LifeKeeper to secure a high occupancy rate in the cloud and DataKeeper to build an operational infrastructure with High Availability Cluster Solution. With these softwares, the team could detected abnormalities not only on hardware and virtual machines, and applications. They have set up a system to quickly restore and continue services even in case of a crisis.
Contact Lens Ordering Platform That Provides 24 Hours 365 Days Service To The Cloud
The Japan Contact Lens Association supports the dissemination of contact lenses and the development of the industry. They operate a network system called “CLIOS (Contact Lens Information & Order System)”. “Web-CLIOS” is an ordering system that can easily place orders from web browsers anytime and anywhere.
High Availability Function To Monitor Applications To Minimize Business Impact In Case Of Failure
The USiZE shared model was supposed to be used as a new operational infrastructure of “Web-CLIOS”. It not only provides computing resources, but also provides system operation know-how acquired over 40 years and ITIL. The latter is a best practice in IT service management and a feature that provides high-quality service. However, even this is not perfect. “To realize the service level required by the Japan Contact Lens Association, we needed a mechanism to increase the availability of the application layer,” Mr. Ishihara said. The USiZE shared model is also equipped with high availability function. For example, if a failure occurs in the host server, you can easily move the virtual machine running on it to another healthy host server easily. It can be failed over. However, what can be monitored with the native virtualization infrastructure is only the state of the guest OS. It is impossible to detect failure of the application. Tesio Abe of senior engineer at SCSK cloud service department, explains, “Although the host server and guest OS appear to be operating normally, the application running on it seems to freeze or go down due to some reason. In the case of mission-critical services like “Web-CLIOS”, high availability functions that can monitor applications are essential.”
Short Failover Time With LifeKeeper and DataKeeper
In order to solve this problem, SCSK focused on cloud-ready High Availability Cluster Solution. After comparing and examining products of several vendors, they adopted LifeKeeper. Makoto Nagashima, SCSK Cloud Service Department Foundation Service Manager, said the High Availability Cluster Solution could maintain reliable operation for a long time.
Above all, it is also easy to install. High-speed data mirroring is performed by DataKeeper as a shared storage between the production node and the standby node. Even if abnormality occurs in the production node, LifeKeeper has a mechanism that can fail over in a shorter time which cannot be found with other products.
High Availability Brought About By “Protection Suite” Will Be Their Weapons For the Future
Although more than two years have already passed since the renewal of “Web-CLIOS”, the system infrastructure has continued to operate steadily without causing serious troubles.
SCSK says it will actively utilize “Protection Suite” in other services and projects. Ikeda said, “While high-speed availability of “mission critical “cloud migration is expected to accelerate, LifeKeeper and DataKeeper’s advanced availability for SCSK consulting /SI business and cloud services will become our weapon for the future.”
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