SIOS SANless clusters

SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring

Storage Newsletter: SIOS DataKeeper SANLess Clustering Software Now Microsoft Azure Certified

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SIOS Technology Corp., maker of SAN and SANLess clustering software products, announced that its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure certified and available in the Azure marketplace.

The SIOS offering is the only Azure certified software that enables customers to create a SANLess HA cluster in Azure using Windows Server Failover Clustering.

By adding SIOS DataKeeper software to Windows Server Failover Clustering, customers can help protect business-critical Windows environments from downtime and data loss in a cloud or a combination of physical, virtual, or hybrid cloud environment. Now, applications depending on SAN-based Windows server failover clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve the more comprehensive HA protection.

“We are pleased that Microsoft has chosen to certify and include SIOS DataKeeper in the Azure Marketplace. By providing fast, convenient access to SIOS DataKeeper software, our Azure Marketplace offering enables customers to deploy their important applications such as SQL, SAP, and Oracle in Azure with the same HA protection they have in traditional physical server environments,” said Jerry Melnick, COO, SIOS.

“Products like SIOS DataKeeper are pivotal in the cloud transformation,” said Vibhor Kapoor, director of product marketing, Microsoft Azure. “By providing the essential HA protection for critical applications that enterprise, need, SIOS and Azure are enabling customers to take their journey to the cloud with confidence.”

Along with its Azure Marketplace offering, SIOS provides an informative, step-by-step guide to creating a HA failover cluster to protect SQL Server in Azure IaaS written by Microsoft MVP, David Bermingham.

Pricing

Read this article at StorageNewsletter.com

Virtual Strategy Magazine: Interview with Sohamn Chatterjee, Senior Business Systems Architect, Spirent Communications

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Virtual Strategy Magazine (VSM): Can you provide some background on Spirent and the nature of your business?
Sohamn Chatterjee (SC): Spirent is a global leader in communications test and measurement with 20 locations in 15 countries worldwide. We enable our customers’ success in development and deployment of communications networks, services and applications. Our broad solutions portfolio addresses data centers, cloud computing, virtualized environments, security, high speed Ethernet networks and services, and infrastructure test optimization.

VSM: How would you categorize Spirent’s IT philosophy as it relates to customer service and your use of innovative technologies as a competitive advantage?
SC: The Spirent IT department is continuously looking for ways to improve efficiency and maintain the highest quality of service to customers. For example, we recognized that moving our operations to the Amazon cloud would provide a variety of benefits. We saw an opportunity to gain significant flexibility, scalability, and efficiency by moving to the Amazon EC2 cloud. This move would let us grow quickly and to apply additional IT resources as our needs change.

VSM: Once you decided to move the cloud, what were your top priorities? What kept you awake at night?
SC: For the move to Amazon EC2 to be successful, our IT staff needed to provide high availability for our Siebel Gateway Server and File Server application environments. We could not move important applications to the cloud until we were sure that we would not be putting them at risk for downtime or data loss. The traditional shared storage clusters that we would have used in a physical environment require shared storage – which is not available in EC2. We needed an affordable, easy-to-deploy solution that would support native Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC).

VSM: With these objectives in mind, what choices did you make?
SC: We chose SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to protect our business critical applications in the cloud. The SIOS software enabled us to create a traditional Windows Server Failover Cluster in AWS without the need for shared storage. We built two-node clusters in the Amazon EC2 cloud using standard WSFC and added SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software as an ingredient. The SIOS software uses efficient, real-time replication to synchronize storage between instances in different AWS Availability Zones, making them appear to WSFC as a SAN. The SIOS software provided intuitive configuration wizards, enabling us to deploy applications in our SANLess clusters quickly and easily. Complete integrations with WSFC, meant our IT staff did not have to change system administration or add complexity. Because the SANLess clusters use local storage, there was minimal performance overhead and fast application response times.

VSM: Can you provide an example of how you were able to provide High Availability assurance in the cloud with SIOS’ SANLess clustering software?
SC: We were able to configure the clusters just as we would in a WSFC environment so we did not need specialized skills or a SAN administrator. The SIOS software enabled us to implement our move to the AWS cloud efficiently. The SIOS software provided the protection we needed to move our important applications to the Amazon EC2 cloud. Since our cluster deployment, we have not experienced any downtime or data loss in the Siebel or File Server environments. We have also found the SIOS SANLess clusters make failover/failback testing fast and easy. We are very pleased with the SIOS software and the protection our SIOS SANLess clusters provide for both our Siebel Gateway Server and File Server application environments in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

VSM: Who is SIOS Technology and do their solutions work just in virtualized environments? What if I have a hybrid infrastructure?
SC: SIOS delivers software solutions that provide application availability and disaster. SIOS SAN and SANLess clustering software provides the flexibility to build clusters your way to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment – and any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) storage – without sacrificing performance or availability. SIOS’ SANLess clustering solution eliminates both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared-SAN storage.

Read this interview on Virtual-Strategy.com

Network World: New products of the week 04.06.15

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Our roundup of intriguing new products from companies such as Riverbed and APImetrics.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software for the Azure Marketplace
Key features: SIOS DataKeeper is the only solution certified to enable the use of Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering in Microsoft Azure cloud. More info.

View the complete slideshow at NetworkWorld.com

SYS-CON Media – Cloud Expo: SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Software Now Microsoft Azure Certified

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http://www.sys-con.com/node/3320313SIOS Technology Corp. has announced that its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure certified and now available in the Azure Marketplace. The new SIOS offering is the only Azure certified software that enables customers to create a SANLess high availability cluster in Azure using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering.

By adding SIOS DataKeeper software to Windows Server Failover Clustering, customers can quickly and easily help protect business-critical Windows environments from downtime and data loss in a cloud or a combination of physical, virtual, or hybrid cloud environment. Now, for the first time, applications depending on SAN-based Windows server failover clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve the more comprehensive high availability protection they need.

“We are pleased that Microsoft has chosen to certify and include SIOS DataKeeper in the Azure Marketplace. By providing fast, convenient access to SIOS DataKeeper software, our Azure Marketplace offering enables customers to deploy their important applications such as SQL, SAP, and Oracle in Azure with the same high availability protection they have in traditional physical server environments,” said Jerry Melnick, COO of SIOS Technology.

“Products like SIOS DataKeeper are pivotal in the cloud transformation,” said Vibhor Kapoor, Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft Azure. “By providing the essential high availability protection for critical applications that enterprises need, SIOS and Azure are enabling customers to take their journey to the cloud with confidence.”

Along with its Azure Marketplace offering, SIOS provides an informative, step-by-step guide to creating a high availability failover cluster to protect SQL Server in Azure IaaS written by Microsoft MVP, David Bermingham. The SIOS DataKeeper offering in the Azure Marketplace is here.

Read the article at SYS-CON.com

WHIR | Hosting and Cloud: New Software on the Azure Marketplace Allows SAN-free Cloud Clustering

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SANLess clustering software developer SIOS Technology has put its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software on the Azure Marketplace, providing enterprises an easy way to create a SANLess high availability cluster in Azure using Windows Server Failover Clustering.

The Azure Marketplace provides convenient access to SIOS DataKeeper, which enterprises can use to easily deploy applications such as SQL, SAP, and Oracle databases in Azure while maintaining high availability and protection.

SIOS was behind the first Linux clustering solution in the 90s. The company has since created a full Linux clustering offering called SIOS Protection Suite, and a product called SIOS Datakeeper for Windows which is essentially an add-on to Windows Server Failover Clustering. Applications depending on SAN-based Windows Server Failover Clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve more comprehensive high availability.

According to Jerry Melnick, COO of SIOS Technology, SIOS software “eliminates the SAN in the cluster, and allow clusters to run in any variety of combinations.” Not having to rely on SAN technology, customers can use a variety of storage types such as high-speed direct attached storage in a physical environment, or cloud-based storage from providers like Azure and Amazon Web Services, and it all appears to applications as local storage. “We’re clusters anywhere and anyway,” he said.

Instead of having to buy and deploy expensive and complicated SAN equipment, SIOS provides an easy way for customers to create cloud storage clusters without leaving their desk. To deploy a SANless cluster, SIOS provides a step-by-step guide by Microsoft MVP David Bermingham.

Melnick said the solution is unique in the market that addresses a pain point for many enterprises running mission-critical applications that rely on transactional databases.

“We’re the only solution certified by Microsoft Windows for Azure to provide support for Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering to run in Azure,” he said. “And what that means is that customers who are accustomed to the high availability capabilities of Windows Server and have their critical applications running on those very popular failover clustering environments can now move those applications directly into Azure as-is. There’s really no change to the application needed – nothing but adding our software.”

SIOS customers can save a great deal of money by deploying clusters on externally hosted services which are often less expensive than local SANs. They can also ensure that data is secure by using VPN connections, and adding their own end-to-end encryption.

Melnick also mentioned that while most use cases up until this point have been enterprises, cloud and hosted service providers have been increasingly interested in SIOS’s SANless clustering capabilities.

“We’ve had probably more inquiries from service providers in the past six months than any time prior. Helping people move important workloads in the cloud is highly differentiating – and service providers are figuring that out. And service providers have their own value that they bring to the cloud ecosystem so we’re working with numbers of them now to put some solutions together.”

Read this article on WHIR