So you did your reviews and research, and picked a High Availability (HA) vendor.  But now that you have spent the money, you don’t feel convinced that you’ve made the right choice. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Five Key Considerations When Your HA Solution Feels Like a Mistake

1. Assess Your IT Team’s Compatibility with the HA Solution

Sometimes the difference between implementing an amazing HA solution and feeling like your solution is just a maze, can be heavily influenced by the IT team using it. Teams heavily trained on one OS, such as Windows for example, may struggle to implement solutions that can only run on a different OS.  As VP of Customer Experience, I’ve also seen the impact that very senior teams can have on success as well as the struggles of teams composed of fresh IT Admins.  Complex solutions that rely on scripting, programming, and diverse administrative capabilities can sometimes overwhelm teams where those skills are in short supply.

2. Importance of a Well-Architectured HA Solution

Architecture design, documents, diagrams, and details can help bolster or break even the best HA solution.  Whether it is an open-source solution with a-la-carte flexibility, or a fixed commercial solution with standards and defaults, a well-thought-out architecture is essential. A product that is not a part of a well-architected solution will always present more challenges than the “ease of use” claims on the brochure. In my role as VP of Customer Experience, my team and I have seen the tremendous value of architectural diagrams and designs, PoC systems, runbooks, and activity plans.

3. Overcoming Bias in HA Solution Implementation

Ralph (not his real name) built an open source kernel in his teens, has always run Linux on his laptops and servers, and has decades of experience implementing homegrown or open-source solutions. When he joined a new team for a PoC of a commercial solution, the evaluation never found the promised success. Why?  Unfortunately, Ralph spent most of his time comparing the commercial solution to his decades of past open-source scripting and management. In his view, it lacked flexibility and was too UI reliant. Bias, whether for commercial or open-source solutions, can heavily influence the success of a project, or weigh heavily on the root cause of its failure. When management, administrators, or executives cannot get past their bias they may sink the project before it can get off the ground.

4. Understanding the True Cost of High Availability

Money, money, money. Listen, investing in the purchase price of the software is only the beginning of the cost for HA. Often failure of a great product is due to a misconception that the purchase price is the only cost associated with HA.  This results in a lack of proper funding and spending needed to address the company’s needs and properly implement the best solution.  Additional investment is often needed and warranted to stand up sandbox systems, provide adequate training, purchase installation or validation services, and stay current with software updates and support.  Sometimes the lack of funding also contributes to team staffing issues that can undermine the success of a particular HA solution.  The need for funding also applies equally to home grown and open-source solutions, as these solutions will need funding for development (scripting), testing, management, maintenance, training, support, and sandbox environments as well.

5. Addressing Cultural Challenges in HA Implementation

Sometimes the real cause of a poor fit is a poor culture.  I’m not suggesting that your company has a terrible culture in general, but it may have a poor culture as it relates to IT and HA specifically.  Any given HA solution that must support databases, storage, networking, servers, applications, and critical services cannot thrive in a culture of silos, or undisciplined and unfettered access. If your company culture is heavy on silos and light on process and discipline, it will likely have challenges with any HA solution.

Evaluate Root Causes Before Dismissing Your HA Vendor

Before you throw out your current HA vendor, take a look to see if any of these potential issues are the root cause for the poor software fit.  In some cases, the difference between trash and treasure lies more with the beholder (and implementation team) than the software.  Be sure that you invest time to correct any self-inflicted issues, otherwise your search for treasure may continue to come up short.

Transform Your HA Strategy with SIOS

For a proven HA solution that adapts to your specific needs and overcomes these challenges, consider SIOS. Our solutions are designed to provide robust high availability for your critical applications, ensuring that your investment turns into a true treasure. Contact SIOS today to learn how we can help you maximize your HA strategy.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

How ESPN’s “Get Up” Morning Show Can Improve Your High Availability Strategy

ESPN is often a go-to source for information on the NFL. The network is known for providing multiple shows to cover each game, which provide extensive analysis, opinions, and random information about the team, the games, the upcoming schedule, and the coaches in the league as well as highlights of particular players.

Learn from ESPN: Enhance Your High Availability with Two Key Questions

In a segment that aired back on September 13th, 2021 Dan Orlovsky lamented the Chicago Bears’ usage of their rookie quarterback. In doing so, he incidentally provided two ways to improve your high availability with just two questions.
Two questions that will immediately improve your high availability from ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky.

Question number one, what are we doing here?

The Bears offense placed rookie quarterback Justin Fields on the field for a second down play.  The rookie quickly fired a pass for a seven yard completion.  However, instead of continuing with the rookie, the play-callers for the Bears went back to their previous QB who promptly threw the ball to the other team. This play elicited the question from Dan Orlovsky, “What are we doing here?”

Okay, so you are not a rookie quarterback, I think.  And, you are not playing for the Bears, I hope.  But, if you are responsible for any part of your enterprise high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategies, including clustering, data protection, data replication, application orchestration, governance/adherence and SLAs, then Orlovsky’s first question is a good place to start.

What are you doing? 

• Are you looking to deploy software and services or remediate a known availability issue?
• Is your team’s central focus on planning for the future, such as moving to the cloud, or addressing some combination of different changes and requirements?
• Is your goal saving cost while meeting regulatory requirements, improving client acquisition through more available resources, or optimizing and improving backend processing?

Answering this question with respect to your enterprise high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) strategies will help clarify a tremendous amount with regards to the solution and architecture you implement, as well as the team and processes associated with them.

Question number two, why are we doing it?

After firing off a series of rapid comments about his frustration with when and how the Chicago Bears used their rookie quarterback, Orlovsky asked the second question, “Why are we doing it?”  If, to paraphrase Orlovsky, the “what” is putting Fields in to check a box and appease the fans, then “why are we doing it?”  Why just check the box, when you could be using more of the dynamic rookie’s abilities to gain an advantage and win games?  Why not make the change that gives you the best chance of being successful.

Of course, we aren’t the coach of the Bears, though I wouldn’t mind calling a few plays.  But, the question still applies to those involved with implementing enterprise availability. Let’s go back to question number one. What was your answer for “what are we doing here?”  Now, answer the question of “why are we doing it?”  Some possible reasons include:

• Providing assurance for data availability
• Saving the business time
• Saving the business money by avoiding costly unplanned downtime
• Saving the business time and money by automating monitoring and recovery
• Deploying an architecture to meet a stringent Service Level Agreement (SLA) or Service Level Objective (SLO)
• Reducing RTO and RPO to zero
• Preventing last year’s disasters from occurring again
• Hedging against the unknown threats of downtime
• Meeting governance requirements
• Checking the box
• Trying not to get fined for noncompliance
• Because management said so

Why are we doing it is a critical question to answer before, during, and after high availability systems have been deployed. As VP of Customer Experience, I worked with a customer whose IT Administrator and DB Administrator had vastly different reasons for “why are we doing it?”  To make matters worse, the executive sponsor held a third view.  Without a properly vetted and communicated “why” the team struggled to properly articulate requirements, and when an incident occurred, their efforts for remediation often created more conflict and questions.

There are likely a number of possible reasons why the Chicago Bears didn’t find success or properly utilize their young QB on the upcoming third down, and an equal number of opinions on what they are trying to accomplish with their franchise and veteran quarterback.  But, even if Orlovsky couldn’t help Bears fans clarify what or why, he did provide the framework for how to immediately improve your HA.  So, how would you answer the two questions: What are we doing for HA?  Why are we doing it?

High Availability Solutions

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