SIOS SANless clusters High-availability Machine Learning monitoring
In today’s fast-paced IT environment, it’s crucial to keep your important data and applications available and reliable at all times. Nutanix AHV (Acropolis HyperVisor) stands out as a robust, enterprise-grade virtualization solution, offering seamless management and scalability. However, achieving high availability within Nutanix AHV environments requires a strategic approach, especially in Linux. SIOS offers comprehensive high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solutions tailored specifically for Nutanix AHV environments running on Windows and all major Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux.
SIOS leverages clustering and automated failover technologies to provide unparalleled resilience to virtualized workloads running on Nutanix AHV. By integrating seamlessly with Nutanix AHV, SIOS extends its capabilities to offer automated monitoring, proactive detection of failures, and swift recovery mechanisms, ensuring minimal downtime and uninterrupted business operations.
What sets SIOS apart from other HA solutions is its unique application-aware HA capabilities. This means that not only is the infrastructure protected, but the applications themselves are monitored and protected against disruptions. SIOS ensures that critical workloads remain accessible and responsive through failures and outages, planned and unplanned.
SIOS HA for Nutanix AHV environments simplifies deployment and management through its simple web management console and streamlined configuration processes. Administrators can easily set up HA clusters, define failover policies, and monitor the health of their virtualized infrastructure from a centralized dashboard.
SIOS HA for Nutanix AHV environments combines the resilience of Nutanix AHV with the reliability of SIOS HA, offering organizations a robust solution to achieve continuous availability and mitigate the risks associated with downtime.
SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux is a simple, cost-efficient clustering software that provides complete high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) protection for SAP, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, MaxDB, and other essential applications operating in virtualized environments, as well as across physical, cloud, hybrid and multi-cloud. Applications protected by LifeKeeper keep running through a wide range of fault, failures, and local, site-wide, and regional disasters, enabling you to meet your availability SLAs with ease.
Unlike other clustering software that only monitors server operation, SIOS LifeKeeper monitors the health of the entire application environment.
Fast, Reliable Failover
When SIOS LifeKeeper detects an issue, it automatically restarts the application services on the same cluster node, often restoring operation. If necessary it fails over to the standby node(s), recovering application operation quickly and efficiently.
Risk-Free Disaster Recovery Testing
SIOS LifeKeeper’s switch over/switch back capabilities makes it easy to perform frequent, risk-free failover and DR testing to ensure the reliability of your application failover and DR.
Wide-range Linux support
SIOS LifeKeeper supports all major Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux and accommodates a wide range of storage architectures.
Protect critical Windows applications from downtime and disasters with SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition. Simply add SIOS DataKeeper to your Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) environment for HA/DR clustering without the cost and single point-of-failure risk of shared storage. Fast, block-level replication synchronizes local storage on all nodes, giving the standby servers immediate access to your most current data in the event of a failover.
Save Up to 70% on Software Licensing Costs
Get enterprise-class clustering features without the need to upgrade to more expensive SQL Server Enterprise Edition or Oracle Database Enterprise Edition.
Protect Unlimited Number of Databases
Unlike SQL Server Always On Availability Groups, which has ~100 database limit, SIOS DataKeeper protects an unlimited number of databases.
Complete Configuration Flexibility
DataKeeper allows for multinode clusters without node limit, unlike SQL Server Always On Availability Groups. Easily add a DR node in the cloud or at a DR site, and mix physical, virtual, and cloud nodes.
LifeKeeper for Windows is a tightly integrated combination of high availability (HA) failover clustering, continuous application monitoring, data replication, and configurable recovery policies. It delivers 99.99% application availability, and disaster recovery (DR) for applications running on Microsoft Windows Server in physical, virtual, cloud, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments.
Application Intelligence
SIOS LifeKeeper includes ARKs for critical applications like SQL Server, Oracle Database, Postgres SQL, and SAP HANA. These kits streamline setup, automate tasks, and manage failover according to best practices.
Optimized for Performance
SIOS LifeKeeper comes bundled with SIOS DataKeeper which provides block-level replication and integrated WAN acceleration for SANless clustering and DR.
Achieve complete high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) protection for critical Windows or Linux workloads in Nutanix AHV environments, as well as across physical, cloud, hybrid and multi-cloud. Schedule a demo or sign up for your free trial today.
When I was a Marine serving with a Tank Battalion, I remember that we’d all prepared ourselves to hear “FIRE IN THE HOLE” just before we shot a projectile. Even if you did not hear others yell this, we had radios/coms, hand/arm signals, flags, flares, etc. indicating that all things were “a go” and the projectile was headed down range. We all knew that communication was essential.
If you are Database Administrator, Server Engineer or an IT generalist responsible for the health of the application resources on your cluster (DataKeeper storage), communication is essential for you too. For example, how do you notify others about your efforts to scale your storage? To be successful, it’s likely you are going to need to communicate with several other members of your team about a wide range of topics, related to your Source and Target Volumes, including:
Who on your team will yell “FIRE IN THE HOLE” when it’s time to provision your existing DataKeeper Mirror(s)? Don’t you want to be notified before and after?
Your DataKeeper Storage requires a few things that need to be communicated to all stakeholders; internally or externally (hosted):
Marine: “Are you ready?”
Other Marines: “Yes!” (There is some swearing of course, WE ARE MARINES! LOL)
Marine: “FIRE IN THE HOLE”
DataKeeper Administrator: “Pause and Unlock Mirror” aka “FIRE IN THE HOLE”
Ready to optimize your storage for high availability? Connect with SIOS experts today to ensure your cluster resizing is smooth, efficient, and built to scale.
Reproduced with permission from SIOS
Ensuring high availability for SQL Server deployments is crucial for maintaining business continuity in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). When choosing how to achieve this, two primary options are available: Always On Availability Groups and SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI).
Always On Availability Groups offer a comprehensive solution for high availability and disaster recovery, but they require SQL Server Enterprise Edition, which can be a significant investment, particularly for businesses that don’t need the full range of features offered by the Enterprise version.
SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI), supported by SQL Server Standard Edition, present a more cost-effective alternative. However, FCIs typically rely on shared storage solutions like a SAN, which isn’t natively available in GCP. This lack of cluster-aware shared storage poses a challenge for businesses looking to deploy FCIs in the cloud.
SIOS DataKeeper provides a solution that bridges the gap, allowing organizations to build a SANless cluster in GCP. This approach removes the need for traditional shared storage by replicating data synchronously across different zones within a region.
SIOS DataKeeper not only replicates the local disks attached to each cloud instance, but it also presents the replicated disk to the cluster as a DataKeeper Volume resource. To the cluster, this volume appears as a shared disk, seamlessly integrating with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC). During a failover, DataKeeper controls the mirror direction, ensuring that the active node remains the source of the mirror while the other nodes become the targets. This setup maintains data consistency and high availability for your SQL Server environment, all while using SQL Server Standard Edition.
1. Cost Savings: By enabling the use of SQL Server Standard Edition for an FCI, SIOS DataKeeper helps organizations avoid the higher costs associated with SQL Server Enterprise Edition.
2. Comprehensive Protection: SIOS DataKeeper replicates the entire SQL Server instance across zones, providing robust protection against zone-level failures.
3. Simplicity and Flexibility: The solution simplifies the process of setting up and managing a SANless FCI in GCP, making it accessible for IT teams and reducing complexity.
For businesses running SQL Server in Google Cloud, finding the right balance between cost and availability is essential. While Always On Availability Groups are powerful, they come with a higher price tag. SIOS DataKeeper offers a practical alternative by enabling the creation of SANless clusters that provide the necessary high availability while keeping costs under control with SQL Server Standard Edition.
For a step-by-step guide on how to implement this solution, I recommend reading the full article, which covers everything from network setup to cluster configuration. This guide will help you deploy a highly available SQL Server environment in GCP with confidence.
Ready to enhance your SQL Server high availability in Google Cloud without breaking the bank? Explore how SIOS DataKeeper can streamline your deployment and maximize your investment. Contact our team for expert assistance in setting up a SANless cluster that meets your specific business needs.
Reproduced with permission from SIOS
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
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?
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