How to Protect Applications in Cloud Platforms – Clusters for Microsoft Azure High Availability

Clusters for Microsoft Azure High Availability

High Availability & Clustering Solutions for Azure

What is Azure Clustering?

An Azure cluster is a set of technologies that are configured to ensure high availability protection for applications running Microsoft Azure cloud environments. In an Azure cluster environment, two or more nodes are configured in a failover cluster and monitored with clustering software. The application runs on a primary node in the cluster. If clustering software detects an application operation failure, it orchestrates a failover of the application operation to secondary node(s) in the cluster. SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition clustering software is a unique add-on to Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) that enables Microsoft clusters to run in Azure and Azure Stack. SIOS Protection Suite for Linux protects critical Linux applications like SAP, HANA Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres in Azure and Azure Stack. SIOS clusters uniquely enable cluster failover across Azure regions and availability zones for true 99.99% uptime and disaster recovery protection.

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Microsoft Azure-Certified Software for HA Clusters w/WSFC

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure-certified and available in the Azure Marketplace. It is the only Azure-certified software that enables customers to create a SANless high availability cluster in Azure or Azure Stack using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC).

By adding SIOS DataKeeper software to WSFC they can quickly and easily protect business-critical Windows environments from downtime and data loss in a cloud or any combination of physical, virtual, or hybrid cloud environment. Now, for the first time, customers using SAN-based Windows server failover clusters to protect their most important applications are free to move them to Azure or Azure Stack and achieve the high availability protection they need.

Find a step-by-step guide to creating an HA failover cluster in Azure here.

Find SIOS DataKeeper in the Azure Marketplace here.

Azure Site Recovery Compatibility for High Availability and Disaster Protection

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition is the only high availability solution certified for use with Microsoft Azure Site Recovery for cost-efficient high availability and disaster recovery protection for business-critical applications in Azure.

SIOS DataKeeper’s compatibility enables customers to protect important applications, including SAP, SQL Server, and Oracle, in Azure cloud environments. SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides a simple way to use Windows Server Failover Clustering – including SQL Server Always On Failover Clustering – in a cloud environment. Customers can replicate the cluster to a geographically separated location using Azure Site Recovery for cost-efficient, robust disaster protection.  Learn more about SQL Server High Availability in Azure.

Together SIOS DataKeeper and Microsoft Azure Site Recovery enable the only option for local high availability protection along with disaster recovery in a highly flexible and on-demand solution.

Protect Linux Applications in Azure

SIOS Protection Suite for Linux lets you run your business-critical applications in Azure or Azure Stack without sacrificing performance, high availability or disaster protection.

Learn more about SIOS SANless Software for Cloud High Availability.

Protect SAP Applications in Azure

SIOS Protection Suite and SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provide comprehensive, fully SAP-certified protection for your SAP applications and data, including high availability, data replication, and disaster recovery in an easy, cost-efficient solution that can operate in the cloud, on-premises or in hybrid cloud configurations.

Learn more about High Performance and High Availability for SAP on Azure

Microsoft High Availability for SAP HANA database on Azure using SIOS Protection Suite

Learn more about SIOS Protection Suite for SAP.

See our latest blog posts about cloud high availability here.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

How to Protect Applications in Cloud Platforms – AWS EC2 High Availability Clustering

How to Protect Applications in Cloud Platforms – AWS EC2 High Availability Clustering

Clusters for AWS High Availability

High Availability and Clustering Solutions for Applications in AWS

What is AWS Clustering?

An AWS cluster is a set of technologies that are configured to ensure high availability protection for applications running AWS EC2 environments and monitored with clustering software. In an AWS cluster environment, two or more nodes in AWS are configured in a failover cluster. The application runs on a primary node in the cluster. If clustering software detects an application operation failure, it orchestrates a failover of the application operation to secondary node(s) in the cluster. To simplify and accelerate the deployment of high availability clusters in AWS, SIOS high availability clustering software is available on the AWS Marketplace. It can be deployed automatically using an AWS QuickStart or via bring-your-own perpetual licensing model. SIOS clusters uniquely enable cluster failover across AWS regions and availability zones for true 99.99% uptime and disaster recovery protection.

SIOS Delivers High Availability in AWS

To simplify and accelerate the deployment of high availability clusters in the cloud, SIOS High Availability Clustering Software is available on AWS Marketplace. It can be deployed automatically using an AWS QuickStart. The AWS Quick Start deployment is ideal for organizations making their first venture into high availability clusters in the cloud.

AWS High Availability with SIOS DataKeeper

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition is the first high availability and disaster recovery solution to combine fully automated, application-centric clustering and efficient data replication. Seamless integration into Windows Server Failover Clustering environments, enable high availability clusters to work in a cloud where shared storage is not possible. SIOS DataKeeper synchronizes local storage in real time using highly efficient block-level replication to create a SANless cluster. System administrators and managers have a chance to try the AWS Quick Start program. They can use the SIOS Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) on AWS Marketplace to see firsthand how easy it is to deploy a two-node SQL Server cluster in the cloud with SIOS DataKeeper. The SIOS AMIs on AWS Marketplace provides an easy, convenient way for customers to purchase SIOS DataKeeper software to protect business-critical applications in AWS.

SIOS Technology has achieved AWS Microsoft Workloads Competency Status. This designation recognizes that SIOS provides proven technology and deep expertise in helping customers in the migration, deployment and management of Microsoft-based applications on AWS, specifically with workloads based on Microsoft SQL Server.

SIOS Protection Suite for Linux Provides Real High Availability for AWS

Cloud providers like AWS provide availability options. But, they do not provide the level of high availability and breadth of protection across the whole application infrastructure that customers demand and that you achieved by using clusters before there were clouds. AWS customers are aware of this. They know that they need real availability and clustering software tools that provide actual levels of high availability (at least 99.99% uptime). As a result, AWS has partnered with SIOS. Our SIOS Protection Suite for Linux to achieve these desired levels of high availability with Linux clustering for our mutual customers and the critical applications they are moving, to the AWS cloud.

SIOS Protection Suite for Linux provides a tightly integrated combination of high availability failover clustering, continuous application monitoring, data replication, and configurable recovery policies. SIOS Protection Suite for Linux includes SIOS LifeKeeper, SIOS DataKeeper, and multiple Application Recovery Kits (ARKs) to protect your business-critical applications and data from downtime and disasters.

SIOS Quick Start deployments for AWS

SIOS delivers the same High Availability capabilities that are available through a Windows Server Failover Cluster in the cloud and configurable on AWS quickly and easily – saving months of effort, improving operational flexibility and drastically lowering costs to set up and maintain. Take a look at how our customers, Gulliver and Epicure, use SIOS High Availability Clustering Software in AWS.

The AWS Marketplace offering and SIOS DataKeeper and SIOS Protection Suite Quick Start deployments for AWS are comprehensive solutions that help simplify the transition to operating high availability in the cloud. Ultimately leading to freeing IT staff to support additional business-driving initiatives.

AWS Quick Starts are automated reference deployments for key workloads on AWS. Each QuickStart launches, configures and runs the AWS service required to deploy a specific workload on AWS. This is done by using AWS best practices for security and availability. QuickStarts eliminate manual steps with a single click. They are fast, low-cost, and customizable. Several SIOS DataKeeper AMIs are available for purchase on AWS Marketplace. Therefore, it enables customers to add high availability to an existing deployment or to deploy a two-node SQL Server cluster in AWS. Read the white paper.

• Purchase SIOS DataKeeper through the AWS Marketplace
• View the Quick Start for SIOS Protection Suite for Linux on AWS
• Learn more about high availability for SQL on AWS
• Request a Free Trial of SIOS High Availability Clustering Software

See our latest blog posts about cloud high availability here.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

How to Protect Applications in Cloud Platforms – SANless Clusters for Cloud Environments

How to Protect Applications in Cloud Platforms – SANless Clusters for Cloud Environments

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Seven Essentials in High Availability Team Transition

Seven Essentials in High Availability Team Transition (Navigating the Great Resignation)

Unless you’ve been under a rock or frozen in time you’ve likely heard from one source or another that employers and employees are in the midst of a trend being called  “The Great Resignation”.  As reported in US News and World Report, “According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July 2021 and the trend isn’t slowing down.”  No matter your company size or current revenue stream, if it hasn’t already, this trend will impact your IT team in the near future.  Yes, let that sink in.  The same team that is responsible for ensuring your mission-critical application availability is vulnerable in one way or another to the effects of “The Great Resignation.”  

So, how do you recognize the warning signs, come to terms with the reality, and navigate with empathy and clarity through “The Great Resignation” so that it doesn’t cause a “Great Disaster” for your critical applications?

Here are technical and non-technical tips for sound High Availability (HA) best practices in the midst of change:

1. Don’t Quit

Don’t quit.  Seriously!  As colleagues and good people are choosing to change jobs, careers, or otherwise leave the workforce it can be tempting to quit.  Especially when you begin to consider the prospect of carrying your already heavy workload with an even shortened bench.  But don’t quit.

 2. Identify Key Risks to High Availability

Of course this process of identifying risks is two-pronged. After a resignation, your team is at risk from further personnel changes.  But, your High Availability is also at risk due to a loss of capacity, technical knowledge, or expertise.  To prevent your enterprise from experiencing unplanned downtime in the wake of new team resignations, you’ll need to identify key areas of risks.  Some technical risks include:

1. Cloud expertise and knowledge
2. Database Administration
3. Storage Administration and configuration
4. Tacit High Availability product knowledge
5. Emergency Coverage (Staffing)
6. Technical Leadership
7. Documentation

3. Managers: Assess Your Company

Many times as people begin to leave a company, it is very easy to say that it is “them, not us!”  We want to focus on all the reasons why their issues led to them leaving, quitting, or choosing a different career or job.  It is quite possible that their reason for leaving is entirely personal, however sometimes, the issue is in the mirror and it is not them, but us.  Why does figuring out whether it is a problem with them or you matter for HA?  Well, if the problem is with your company, such as it’s mission, vision, culture around HA and IT, or hiring and staffing issues for IT and HA system management, then simply adding an additional headcount will be a temporary fix.  In addition, the risks to the team morale, commitment, and knowledge transfer may be further eroded as the focus remains on blame shifting versus issue resolution.

4. Team Leads: Assess Your Team

Almost every company has had someone quit their team over the past two years.  No matter whether they were seeking higher pay, staying at home to care for family members, retiring or pursuing other options, they have left.  If you’ve lost a team member, it is essential to assess the remaining team.  This assessment will be both technical and non-technical in nature.  Technically, you will need to:

   a. Identify current skills, abilities and knowledge gaps

What skills are remaining on the team, and what is the level of technical expertise and ability? Where are the knowledge gaps between, especially those between theory and practice?

   b. Understand both existing and missing roles.  

Many of your team members may be covering multiple roles and responsibilities.  The loss of a single team member may actually mean the loss of coverage for multiple roles and responsibilities.

   c. Evaluate immediate training or augmentation needs

Where are you covered, but needing additional training to stabilize and solidify the team? What areas do you lack coverage that can be mitigated by training of existing personnel or some form of contract professional services?  As VP of Customer Experience, see this firsthand. Our team recently worked with a company needing professional services after losing key team members responsible for their HA environment.

Non-Technically, you will need to:

   a. Understand how remaining team members feel

Even prior to the COVID pandemic and period of “The Great Resignation,” many teams were running on fumes. A 24/7 world of HA leaves a lot of work to be done with normal team numbers, norms, and tasks.  If your team has been impacted, it is as critical as a down production server to check in and listen to the stories of remaining team members.  Find out who is depleted, burned out, confused, nearing a collapse or conversely, full alive and ready for a new challenge. Be sure to listen to verbal and non-verbal cues, empathize (not just with the loss of a colleague, but with their emotions, concerns, and fears).

   b. Understand the reasons that the remaining team members are still on board

Knowing how team members feel is both a technical and non-technical necessity, but nearly equal to this task is discovering their reasons for staying.  Of course, some reasons may surprise you.  Author and speaker Carey Nieuwhof states that some team members are only staying because they “feel trapped on the team because they didn’t leave first.”  Other reasons team members stay may not surprise you, but regardless of the reason, comfort, opportunity, salary, location, stock options, passion, teamwork, culture, all of the reasons your team members stay for are important.

   c. Evaluate the impact of being short-handed 

There is obviously a technical component of being short handed previously discussed; assessing skills gaps, etc.  But there is a corollary to the technical assessment of being short handed, and that is non-technical.  Be sure to assess and evaluate the impact that being short handed, even if only momentarily, will have on the mental, emotional, and personal health of remaining team members.  Early in my career as a manager, our team dealt with a downsizing event that left several employees emotionally vulnerable and mentally exhausted.  This led to higher fatigue, more mental fog, and increased rates of defects and mistakes by those team members.  If your team is severely impacted mentally and physically by being short-handed, the risk to your HA could increase.  Your team may be scrambling to pick up the slack, and they may rally quickly to cover for the leader or team member who has resigned, but it is critical that you understand if those who remain are also exhausted, feeling trapped, or at risk to leave.

5. Identify the Critical Technical Tasks, Priorities and Assign Responsibilities

Years ago, a senior executive left the company.  Despite having transitioned his roles and tasks throughout nearly a year of transition, there were still roles and tasks that surprised the remaining staff.  In today’s wave of resignations you don’t have a full year of transition.  Furthermore, if your team has experienced more than one resignation, you probably haven’t completed the analysis and transition of the first person so it is very critical to identify and prioritize the most critical tasks, and assign responsibilities.   Be sure to list out tasks such as: security scans, updates, maintenance, backups, tests, new application deployments, cost analysis, cloning and redeployment of images, patch application, and vulnerability remediation.  These tasks will all remain necessary despite the losses and can have devastating effects if left to linger.

6. Make a Short-term Plan for Maintenance and Operation

Tasks, roles and responsibilities still need to be covered.  Critical issues will need to be addressed.  Unplanned downtime will not wait to happen after you have rebuilt your staff, trained existing personnel, and fitted your company to be more resilient to the transitions and changes of the Great Resignation.  In order to navigate in the short term, you will need to develop a smart, realistically achievable short term plan.  This plan should map out the procedures, tasks and processes identified so that maintenance and operation can continue.  Furthermore, it should define how existing critical infrastructure policies can be managed carefully through the tumultuous seasons to come.

7. Focus on the Future

The previous steps have led up to this.  With an assessment of the current team, and identification of your key risks, and a transition plan in place the next step is to focus on the future. You still have a mission.  You still have critical applications that need to be highly available.  You still have data that needs to be protected, mined, replicated, and available for your business.  Start making plans for the future team.

1. Build roles and responsibilities.
2. Update architectures and documentation
3. Evaluate opportunities for growth and alignment
4. Plan for new hires, including time for onboarding
5. Allocate time and resources to creating and updating onboarding materials
6. Focus on team health
7. Apply risk mitigation strategies for the near term and plan for the long term

Not all of the news about “The Great Resignation” is bad news for your team and HA.  In the wake of team members leaving for new or different positions and opportunities, you have a real and rare opportunity to take all the information of your assessments and turn them into tools for growth and alignment and a better HA future.  Building this brighter future includes defining the duties, roles, and skills needed, updating architectures and designs, planning for new hires and services engagements, and focusing on building a healthier team.

I discussed this subject in more detail in this recent TFir interview. 

-Cassius Rhue, VP, Customer Experience

Reproduced from SIOS

Minimizing Downtime with High Availability

Minimizing Downtime with High Availability

Downtime has become more costly than ever before for modern businesses. The ITIC 2021 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey found that in 91% of organizations, one hour of downtime in a business-critical system, database, or application costs an average of more than $300,000, and for 18% of large enterprises, the cost of an hour of downtime exceeds $5 million.

High availability (HA) is an attribute of a system, database, or application that’s designed to operate continuously and reliably for extended periods. The goal of HA is to reduce or eliminate unplanned downtime for critical applications. This is achieved by eliminating single points of failure by incorporating redundant components and other technologies in the design of a business-critical system, database, or application.

SLAs and HA Metrics

Service-level agreements (SLAs) are used by service providers to guarantee that a customer’s business-critical systems, databases, or applications are up and running when the business needs them.

IDC has created an SLA model that defines uptime requirements at five levels as follows:

• AL4 (Continuous Availability – System Fault Tolerance): No more than 5 minutes and 15 seconds of planned and unplanned downtime per year (99.999% or “five-nines” availability)
• AL3 (High Availability – Traditional Clustering): No more than 52 minutes and 35 seconds of planned and unplanned downtime per year (99.99% or “four-nines” availability)
• AL2 (Recovery – Data Replication and Backup): No more than 8 hours, 45 minutes, and 56 seconds of planned and unplanned downtime per year (99.9% or “three-nines” availability)
• AL1 (Reliability – Hot Swappable Components): No more than 87 hours, 39 minutes, and 29 seconds of planned and unplanned downtime per year (99% or “two-nines” availability)
• AL0 (Unprotected Servers): No availability or uptime guarantee

 According to ITIC, 89% of surveyed organizations now require “four-nines” availability for their business-critical systems, databases, and applications, and 35% of those organizations further endeavor to achieve “five-nines” availability.

In addition to uptime and availability, two other important HA metrics are Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). RTO is the maximum tolerable duration of any outage and RPO is the maximum amount of data loss that can be tolerated when a failure happens. Unlike RTO and RPO metrics for disaster recovery which are typically defined in hours and days, RTO and RPO metrics for business-critical systems, databases, and applications are often only a few seconds (RTO) and zero (RPO).

HA Clustering

HA clustering typically consists of server nodes, storage, and clustering software.

Traditional Clustering

A traditional, on-premises HA cluster is a group of two or more server nodes connected to shared storage (typically, a storage area network, or SAN) that are configured with the same operating system, databases, and applications (see Figure 1).

One of the nodes is designated as the primary (or active) node and the other(s) are designated as secondary (or standby) nodes. If the primary node fails, clustering allows a system, database, or application to automatically fail over to one or more secondary nodes and continue operating with minimal disruption. Since the secondary node is connected to the same storage, operation continues with zero data loss.

However, the use of shared storage in the traditional clustering model creates several challenges, including:

• The shared storage itself is a single point of failure that can potentially take all of the connected nodes in the cluster offline.
• SAN storage can also be costly and complex to own and manage.
• Shared storage in the cloud can add significant, unnecessary cost and complexity and some cloud providers don’t even offer a shared storage option.

SANless Clustering

SANless or “shared nothing” clusters (see Figure 2) address the challenges associated with shared storage. In these configurations, every cluster node has its own local storage. Efficient host-based, block-level replication is used to synchronize storage on the cluster nodes, keeping them identical. In the event of a failover, secondary nodes access an identical copy of the storage used by the primary node.

Clustering Software

Clustering software lets you configure your servers as a cluster so that multiple servers can work together to provide HA and prevent data loss. A variety of clustering software solutions are available for Windows, Linux distributions, and various virtual machine hypervisors. However, each of these solutions limits your flexibility and deployment options and introduces various challenges such as technical complexity and expensive licensing.

Don’t Wait for Disaster to Strike

HA is crucial for business-critical systems, databases, and applications. But with the myriad platforms available, complexity ramps up significantly. That’s why an application-aware solution makes so much sense. What you need is a trusted partner who has extensive expertise in high availability—a partner like SIOS, which has the technological know-how to ensure that your business stays up and running.

Don’t wait for an outage or disaster to find out if you have the resiliency your business needs. Schedule a personalized demo today at https://us.sios.com to see what SIOS can do for your business.

Reproduced from SIOS