Ensuring HA for Building Management Systems

Ensuring HA for Building Management Systems

Why BMS Serves as a Role Model for Other Industries

At the heart of every modern building, there is a building management system (BMS) that controls the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), the lighting and security systems, the fire suppression systems, and more. Building managers rely on BMS consoles to streamline and optimize a building’s operations and ensure the tenants’ environment is comfortable and safe. A BMS needs to operate reliably whether it is in an on-premises data center or a public cloud environment, such as AWS EC2, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). There are several approaches to protecting a BMS from downtime and disasters—using fault tolerant (FT) solutions, high availability (HA) solutions, and disaster recovery (DR) solutions—but determining which approach is best depends upon multiple considerations.

How SIOS Ensures HA for BMS

SIOS’ EMEA Technical Director Harry Aujla explains in this TFiR video interview why high availability is an integral part of BMS solutions and a good model for other critical applications. He goes on to explain some of the ways BMS has evolved over the years with the increasing reliance on IT. He says, “If BMS customers fully understand how high availability works on the cloud, then I think we’ll see a more significant migration of BMS solutions to cloud platforms.”SIOS Technology Corporation provides high availability cluster software that protects & optimizes IT infrastructures with cluster management for your most important applications. Contact us today for more information about our professional services and support.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Video: Minimize downtime for your edge computing with SIOS Technology

Video: Minimize downtime for your edge computing with SIOS Technology

White Paper: Protecting SAP & SAP S/4HANA in Amazon EC2 with SIOS Protection Suite

White Paper: Protecting SAP & SAP S/4HANA in Amazon EC2 with SIOS Protection Suite

While AWS has provisions for ensuring availability at the infrastructure level, the business-critical nature of SAP landscapes warrants more protection. That is, specialized attention needs to be paid to the application and database layers. There several options for providing this added protection.

This white paper looks at best practices for running an SAP or SAP S/4HANA on Linux distributions, including Oracle Linux, Red Hat, SUSE, and CentOS, on AWS.

The Challenges of Using Amazon EBS Multi-Attach for Microsoft Failover Clusters

The Challenges of Using Amazon EBS Multi-Attach for Microsoft Failover Clusters

Overview of Amazon EBS and Microsoft Failover Clusters 

Amazon EBS Multi-Attach volumes and Microsoft Failover Clusters are powerful tools in the world of cloud computing and data management. However, integrating these two technologies can be fraught with challenges. This blog post delves into why using Amazon EBS Multi-Attach for Microsoft Failover Clusters is often not the best choice.

The Single AZ Constraint for Robust Failover Clusters

A key limitation of Amazon EBS volumes is their confinement to a single Availability Zone (AZ). For robust failover clusters, deploying instances across multiple AZs is a recommended best practice, something EBS volumes cannot directly support.

High Availability SLA Concerns

While EBS volumes offer a 99.9% availability SLA, this falls short of the 99.99% commonly expected for high availability solutions. AWS does guarantee this higher SLA when deploying instances across multiple AZs, a benefit not extended to single-AZ deployments.

Cost Implications of IO2 Volumes

Windows Failover Clusters with multi-attach EBS volumes necessitate the use of IO2 volumes, which are approximately nine times more expensive than GP3 volumes of similar size and performance. This cost difference is significant, especially for large-scale deployments.

Complexity in AWS Cluster Configuration

Building a cluster in AWS with nodes in the same AZ requires the division of the AZ into multiple subnets to support different virtual IP addresses (VIPs) in the Windows cluster. This complexity, along with the inability to share a single VIP across cluster nodes, adds to the configuration challenges.

SIOS DataKeeper: A Superior Alternative

SIOS DataKeeper emerges as a superior solution, allowing clusters that span subnets while providing the desired 99.99% availability SLA. Not only does it offer more flexible storage options, including the use of GPT3 disks, but it is also far more cost-effective. Clusters using SIOS DataKeeper with GPT3 disks can be around 20% of the cost of similar IO2-based clusters, with enhanced availability.

Superior High Availability with SIOS 

The use of Amazon EBS Multi-Attach volumes in Microsoft Failover Clusters presents several significant challenges, from limited AZ deployment options and lower availability SLAs to higher costs and increased configuration complexity. SIOS DataKeeper offers a compelling alternative, balancing cost, flexibility, and reliability more effectively. For organizations seeking high availability and cost efficiency, exploring options beyond EBS Multi-Attach is a prudent strategy. Contact SIOS for more information.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Video: Application High Availability Will Become Universal | Predictions From SIOS Technology

Video: Application High Availability Will Become Universal | Predictions From SIOS Technology

SIOS Technology is a high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions company providing application availability for critical mission-critical databases, applications, and services for their customers across Windows and Linux systems, and a variety of cloud platforms. Cassius Rhue, VP of Customer Experience at SIOS Technology, shares his 2024 predictions.

As reliance on applications continues to rise, there will be increasing pressure on IT teams to deliver efficient high availability and disaster recovery for applications that were traditionally considered non-essential in addition to mission-critical ones. Due to this shift, we will likely see an expansion of high-availability software solutions and services to meet this expectation.

With more companies expanding into the cloud and across different operating systems, more teams are also expected to cover a diverse set of operating systems, applications, and cloud platforms. Teams will be looking for applications and solutions that are consistent across these different operating systems and cloud environments to reduce complexity and improve cost efficiency.

HA solutions will also need to be consistent across the operating systems and cloud environments and we will see a drive toward cloud-agnostic HA. Companies need HA and DR solutions to be simple, automated, quick, and intelligent. As more organizations are migrating to the cloud, they will need to ensure they do not lose data in the process. HA solutions will need to bridge the gap between the old systems and the more modern ones.

2024 will see an increased focus on data retention, security access controls, and permissions prompting organizations to integrate more enhanced security measures into their high availability and disaster recovery solutions, services, and strategies. As the volume of data that is being collected continues to increase, organizations will also need more information about why failures have occurred. Automation and orchestration tools will likely play a central role in streamlining root cause analysis and providing intelligent responses.

SIOS Technology will continue to focus on its customers in the coming year, helping them avoid and reduce downtime, and ensuring their data and applications are available when the business needs them most. The company will continue to optimize its solution, providing additional adjacent services to benefit their customers, as well as, helping application providers and cloud providers form an effective HA strategy.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS