White Paper: The Buyer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Cloud Storage for High Availability

White Paper: The Buyer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Cloud Storage for High Availability

High availability is non-negotiable for business essential applications, but with so many cloud storage solutions on the market, how do you choose? This white paper discusses the 10 key questions you should ask before you buy to ensure high availability, seamless disaster recovery, and cost-effective scalability that’s right for you.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

CloudStrike Downtime Debrief: Practical Ways To Use HA For Patching

CloudStrike Downtime Debrief: Practical Ways To Use HA For Patching

As a company dedicated to protecting critical applications from downtime, we want to share some context and practical advice about IT patching policies and the role of high availability.

Patching policies have evolved significantly over the years. From a cautious approach that prioritized extensive testing to the current urgency-driven model addressing zero-day exploits, the landscape of software patch management has transformed in response to escalating cyber threats. This blog delves into this evolution, the driving forces behind these changes, and how SIOS Technology’s LifeKeeper and DataKeeper high availability (HA) solutions play a crucial role in enabling customers to balance the need for security with operational stability.

The Traditional Approach

Historically, organizations adopted a conservative stance toward patching – particularly in highly critical environments – that was driven by several factors:

1. Stability Concerns: Patching could potentially introduce new bugs or compatibility issues, leading to system instability.
2. Complex Environments: Enterprise IT environments are complex, with numerous interdependencies. A patch might fix one issue but break another, necessitating thorough testing.
3. Operational Downtime: Applying patches often requires system downtime, which could disrupt business operations and lead to financial losses.

In this traditional model, patches were rigorously tested in staging environments that mirrored production systems. Only after exhaustive testing and validation would patches be deployed to production. This approach minimized risks but also meant that systems remained vulnerable to known threats for extended periods.

The Shift: Zero Day Exploits Driving Immediate Patching

The emergence of zero-day exploits has fundamentally changed patching policies. Attackers exploit security flaws before the vendor is aware of them and can issue a patch. Time is of the essence. No one wants to be hacked via a vulnerability addressed in a patch that IT has been slow to apply. The increasing frequency and sophistication of these exploits have forced organizations to prioritize speed over caution.

The New Imperative: Patch Immediately

Several high-profile incidents, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, highlighted the devastating potential of zero-day vulnerabilities. These incidents underscored the need for immediate patching to protect against exploits that could cause significant damage.
However, this urgency comes with its own set of challenges:

1. Increased Risk of Downtime: Rapid deployment of patches without thorough testing can lead to system crashes and service interruptions.
2. Operational Strain: IT teams must work quickly to assess, test, and deploy patches, often under immense pressure.
3. Resource Allocation: Prioritizing patching over other IT tasks can strain resources and divert attention from other critical projects.

SIOS High Availability for Rolling Maintenance

SIOS high availability (HA) solutions are a crucial component in modern patch management strategies. SIOS clustering software is designed to ensure continuous operation, even during maintenance activities such as patching. Here’s how SIOS LifeKeeper and DataKeeper software solutions enable organizations to balance the need for security with operational stability:

Seamless Patching and Testing

1. Redundancy and Failover: SIOS clusters use redundancy and failover mechanisms to maintain service availability. In a SIOS environment, critical applications are run on a primary server node and “clustered” with a secondary node so that if the primary fails, the secondary is ready to automatically take over operation. This setup allows patches to be applied in a “rolling maintenance” strategy. That is, IT applies patches to the secondary node while the primary continues to handle the workload, thereby minimizing downtime. After the maintenance is complete on the secondary node, operation can be moved to the secondary node and the original primary node can be updated.
2. Staged Rollouts: SIOS HA architectures facilitate staged rollouts of patches. Organizations can deploy patches to a subset of servers or nodes and monitor their impact before applying them to the entire system. This staged approach helps identify and mitigate potential issues without affecting the entire infrastructure.

Benefits of SIOS HA for Patching

• Minimized Downtime: By ensuring that at least part of the system remains operational during patching, SIOS LifeKeeper and DataKeeper solutions reduce the risk of service disruptions.
• Improved Testing: Staging environments within SIOS HA configurations allow for real-time testing and validation of patches without impacting the production environment.
• Enhanced Security: Faster deployment of critical patches reduces the window of vulnerability to exploits, enhancing overall security posture.

Conclusion

The evolution of patching policies from a cautious, test-first only approach to the urgency-driven, immediate deployment model reflects the growing threat landscape and the need for rapid response to zero-day exploits. While this shift has introduced challenges, SIOS provides a robust framework for balancing security and stability. By leveraging SIOS’ HA solutions, organizations can ensure continuous operation, even during critical patching activities, thereby safeguarding their systems and data against emerging threats without compromising on performance and uptime.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Video: Everything you need to know about High Availability, Backup and Disaster Recovery

Video: Everything you need to know about High Availability, Backup and Disaster Recovery

Video: TechStrongTV: Empowering HA Cluster Administrators with SIOS Technology’s Aaron West

Video: TechStrongTV: Empowering HA Cluster Administrators with SIOS Technology’s Aaron West

In this video interview, Aaron West, Sales Engineer at SIOS Technology, discusses the release of SIOS Technology’s new LifeKeeper Web Management Console. Enterprises heavily depend on vital systems like SAP, HANA, and Oracle, making robust High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) solutions imperative. The complexity of these environments often exceeds the expertise of in-house IT teams, leading to potential downtime and financial losses. Aaron shares how SIOS emphasizes empowering generalist IT administrators, ensuring critical systems’ uninterrupted functionality.

Watch the interview HERE.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Maintain HA and DR When Converting a Shared Storage Cluster to a SANless Cluster with DataKeeper

Maintain HA and DR When Converting a Shared Storage Cluster to a SANless Cluster with DataKeeper

1. Prepare the Environment

• Backup Data: Ensure that you have a complete backup of your current shared storage data.
• Install DataKeeper: Download and install SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition on both nodes of your cluster.
• License Activation: Activate the DataKeeper license on both nodes.

2. Put the Shared Storage Cluster into Maintenance Mode

• Maintenance Mode: Put the cluster into maintenance mode to prevent any changes during the configuration process.

3. Adjust Shared Disk Access

• Restrict Access: Adjust the shared disk configuration so that only one node has access to the disk. This is typically done through your SAN management software or server settings.

4. Remove the Shared Storage Cluster Disk Resources

• Remove Resources: Remove the cluster disk resources from the cluster configuration completely, including Available Storage.

5. Add Local Disk on Secondary Node

• Add Local Disk: Add an additional local disk to the secondary node. This disk should be the same size and have the same drive letter as the original shared disk.
• Format Local Disk: Format the new local disk and ensure it is ready for use.

6. Create SIOS DataKeeper Replication Job

• Launch SIOS DataKeeper UI: Open the DataKeeper user interface on the primary node.
• Create Job: Create a new replication job by specifying the source volume (the shared disk on the primary node) and the target volume (the local disk on the secondary node).
• Select Replication Mode: Choose the appropriate replication mode (synchronous or asynchronous) based on your requirements.
• Start Replication: Initiate the replication process to synchronize data from the shared disk to the local disk.

7. Register SIOS DataKeeper Volume in the Cluster

• Register Volume: Register the DataKeeper volume in the cluster. This involves adding the DataKeeper volume as a clustered resource in WSFC.

8. Reconfigure Cluster Resource Dependencies

• Add SIOS DataKeeper Volume: Add the newly created DataKeeper volume to the existing cluster resource configuration.
• Recreate Dependencies: Recreate the dependencies for the DataKeeper volume to ensure it works seamlessly with your clustered applications.

9. Configure a New Witness

• Remove Disk Witness: If you are using a disk witness, remove any disks used as a disk witness from the cluster.
• Configure File Share Witness or Cloud Witness:
  • File Share Witness: Create a file share on a separate server and configure the cluster to use this file share as a witness.
  • Cloud Witness: Configure a cloud witness by setting up a storage account in Azure and configuring the cluster to use this storage account as a witness.

10. Bring the New Resource Online

• Bring Online: Bring the new DataKeeper volume resource online.
• Test Failover: Perform a failover test to ensure that the DataKeeper volume and your clustered applications function correctly on all nodes.

11. Finalize the Configuration for the SANless Cluster

• Exit Maintenance Mode: Take the cluster out of maintenance mode.
• Backup Configuration: Take a backup of your new SANless cluster configuration.
• Document Changes: Document all changes made during the conversion process for future reference and troubleshooting.

By following these steps, you will successfully convert your shared storage cluster into a SANless cluster using local disks and SIOS DataKeeper while maintaining high availability and data replication without relying solely on shared storage. Additionally, you will have configured a File Share Witness or Cloud Witness, ensuring proper quorum configuration in your cluster.

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