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High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

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High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

SAP S/4HANA High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions

SAP-Certified High Availability for SAP and HANA in Physical, Virtual or Cloud Environments

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux provides intelligent HA protection for mission-critical SAP S/4HANA environments – on-premises or in the cloud – without the need for specialized skills or the risk inherent in complex, manual scripting. Application-aware availability ensures cluster failover automatically adheres to S/4HANA best practices for fast, reliable continued operation.

System cloning capabilities enable easy deployment of SIOS clusters to protect any application using consistent, predefined settings and integrated best practices.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux delivers:

  • Out-of-the-box high availability for SAP HANA – Meet SLAs for >99.99% availability without specialized expertise
  • 5X faster configuration. Wizard-driven, highly automated configuration and management removes time-consuming, error-prone manual steps.
  • No specialized knowledge of clustering or underlying application technology required
  • Validation of user input ensures error-free configuration and management settings
  • Application hooks provide deep monitoring of SAP S/4HANA services and performance
  • CLI Cloning (Import/Export configuration) enables easy configuration, and operation of new systems with predefined settings and integrated best practices.

Continuous Monitoring of the Entire SAP Environment

Unlike traditional SAP clustering software that only checks that the server is operational, SIOS software monitors the health of the entire application environment and verifies that SAP and/or HANA is running, file shares and provides superior protection:

  • Protect your entire SAP stack with high availability clustering, continuous data replication, and disaster recovery functionality
  • Supports both JAVA and ABAP versions of SAP servers running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and other Linux OS environments and accommodates a wide range of storage architectures.
  • Compatible with your local SSD storage for high performance for a fraction of the cost of traditional clusters
  • Efficient replication engine minimizes network traffic–without hardware accelerators or compression devices
  • Saves labor cost by automating data replication tasks using an intuitive management console
  • AS Application Server or NFS exports are available, databases are mounted and available, and clients are able to connect

Monitoring the Entire SAP Environment

SIOS software actively monitors: servers, operating systems, SAP Primary Application Server (PAS) Instance, ABAP SAP Central Service (ASCS) instance, back-end databases (Oracle, DB2, MaxDB, MySQL  and PostgresSQL), the SAP Central Services Instance (SCS), volumes or file systems, file shares or NFS mounts, IP and virtual IP, Enqueue and message servers, and Logical Volumes (LVM).

SIOS LifeKeeper software to build a traditional SAN-based cluster or a SANless cluster by synchronizing local storage on the active SAP Server node (or cloud instance) with. local storage on a standby node using real-time, block-level replication. Replication can operate in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. SANless clusters can be used to support high availability operations in cloud environments.

Automatic Failover

In the event of a failure on the active cluster node, SIOS software moves SAP and/or S/4HANA operation to the standby node. SIOS software lets you configure standby servers that are either local or remote over a LAN or WAN. Real-time storage replication ensures immediate recovery from a local system failure and allows you to create multiple real-time copies through one-to-many replication.

SIOS LifeKeeper can also stop and restart the application both locally and on another cluster server at either the same site or at another geographic location. When the SIOS software detects a problem, it automatically initiates one of three configurable recovery actions that will maximize uptime and protection for applications and data: it may attempt a restart on the same server; switchover to a standby server; or alert a system administrator. It performs both local recovery or complete failover quickly and easily.

The Industry’s Most Comprehensive Disaster Protection for SAP HANA

SIOS software makes disaster recovery testing easy by allowing administrators to move SAP and/or HANA to the DR site for testing and to move it back to the primary site when testing is done. It also lets you leave SAP in service in the primary site while completing DR testing with no impact to your production network by unlocking the target data, bringing it into service on the backup system to verify recovery.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux with HANA Multitarget feature provides automated high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) protection for HANA databases. It allows you to extend a traditional two-node failover cluster to include additional nodes in DR location(s) without the need for complex scripting or cumbersome administration tasks. Learn more here

Consistent HA Protection for Windows and Linux

SIOS gives you the flexibility to run SAP on a combination of Windows and Linux environments while maintaining consistent high availability protection. For example, SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux to protect SAP application and pair it with SIOS DataKeeper software to protect SAP services in a Windows environment.

Low Total Cost of Ownership

SIOS engaged an independent organization with many years of experience in deploying, supporting, and designing high availability (HA) solutions for SAP S4/HANA to compare SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux with SUSE HAE in a side-by-side test. Testing revealed that SIOS clusters could be implemented five times faster (less than 2 hours for SIOS vs 12 Hours for HAE). Annual maintenance was also faster for SIOS,

SIOS Delivers Significant Savings

Example: A small sized SAP implementation with three production systems with equivalent test environments that are clustered for a total of six clusters could save 18 business days with SIOS. Here’s how:

SIOS saves two days per cluster of implementation time and one day per cluster per year on testing/maintenance and significantly reduce implementation risk. 

6 clusters X 2 days implementation 12 days
+ 6 clusters X 1 day per year testing/maintenance 6 days (annually)
Save 18 Days of IT Time

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

SQL Server High Availability

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SQL Server High Availability

SQL Server High Availability

SANless High Availability On-Premises and in the Cloud

SIOS software enables high availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server operating in any combination of physical, virtual, cloud, or hybrid cloud without the cost and complexity of a SAN or other shared storage.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition for SQL Server High Availability

Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) is commonly used to provide high availability for SQL Server. It implements full coordination of redundant computing resources and automatically manages the recovery of SQL Server operations and data on a standby node in the event of server or application failure. But WSFC requires expensive SAN hardware or complex shared storage in the cloud.

Simply add SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to WSFC to easily create a SANless cluster for SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery in the cloud, in virtualized environments such as VMware or Hyper-V, or on physical servers.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is a fully certified Microsoft Azure high availability solution.

Learn more about SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition

SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Cloud and Hybrid Cloud

SIOS DataKeeper lets you run your business-critical applications in a flexible, scalable cloud environment, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform without sacrificing performance, high availability or disaster protection. SIOS DataKeeper is available in the AWS Marketplace and Azure-certified high availability software for WSFC is offered in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

Scale Out File Server (SOFS) and Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), two technologies offered in Microsoft Windows for sharing disks, can’t be used in a cluster for sharing disks across cloud regions and availability zones, putting SQL Server at risk of downtime.

In contrast, SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides high availability cluster failover across cloud regions and availability zones – giving you significantly greater protection from a broad class of failures.

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups SIOS DataKeeper with SQL Server Always On Failover Clusters
Requires costly SQL Server Enterprise Edition Save up to 70% on software licensing costs and provides enterprise-class clustering features by using SQL Server Standard Edition with SIOS DataKeeper.
Cloud limited IP addresses. SIOS supports unlimited databases. No need to keep track or worry about failures.
Supports only 2 nodes in SQL 2014 &­ earlier. Supports only 3 nodes in SQL 2016 & earlier. DataKeeper replicates all changes automatically keeping all nodes up to date.
Added complexity – all changes and updates to the system databases have to be made on all nodes manually DataKeeper gives you the flexibility to create a multinode cluster without a limit to the number of failover nodes.
Microsoft has only tested 100 databases and 10 Availability Groups – “results may vary depending on hardware” One load balancer per AG in Azure are all addressed by 1 IP address.

Learn more about SIOS DataKeeper in the cloud

Compare SQL Server Cluster Options for High Availability

For SQL Server clustering, a common choice of availability is Microsoft Always On Availability Groups and Always On Failover Clusters. SIOS DataKeeper provides a number of key benefits to achieve higher availability and more comprehensive data protection.

Learn why AWS Prescriptive Guidance Includes SIOS DataKeeper with Always On Failover Clusters

SIOS LifeKeeper for SQL Server High Availability in Windows or Linux

SIOS Protection Suite for Windows provides integrated data replication, high availability clustering and disaster recovery solutions to provide high availability protection for the most demanding enterprise SQL Server deployments.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux provides enterprise-class, application-aware HA/DR protection for SQL Server in all major distributions of Linux, including Red Hat, SUSE, and Oracle Linux.

Learn more about SIOS Protection Suite for Linux

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

HA for Virtual Server Environments

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HA for Virtual Server Environments

HA for Virtual Server Environments

Availability clustering is a common feature of hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer. It provides a simple virtual machine restart. Simple restart techniques have no visibility into application issues causing outages or storage problems that require action. Hypervisor-based restart requires application downtime for maintenance/upgrades and you can’t easily roll back from upgrade failures or viruses. Most importantly, hypervisor-based availability can’t make guarantees a restart will even succeed in the event of a failure. This falls far short of providing the kind of comprehensive availability provided by high availability clustering that enterprises depend on.

SIOS SANless cluster software provides the enterprise-grade high availability, reliability, and flexibility needed for your most important applications when operating in virtualized environments. Use SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux to protect critical Linux applications like SAP and databases such as Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres in virtualized environments. SIOS DataKeeper provides a unique software add-on to Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) to allow Microsoft Clusters and SQL Server workloads to run in VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer environments.

Protecting VMware Environments

VMware HA is a well-established and broadly used feature. It provides simple virtual machine restart on a second host should the primary host fail. However, simple restart techniques have no visibility into application issues or storage problems causing outages. VMware HA requires application downtime for maintenance/upgrades and you can’t easily roll back from upgrade failures or viruses. Most importantly, hypervisor-based availability can’t make guarantees that a restart will even succeed in the event of a failure. This falls far short of providing the kind of comprehensive availability that enterprises depend on.

SIOS SANless cluster software provides the enterprise-grade high availability, reliability, and flexibility needed for your most important applications when operating in VMware environments. Use SIOS Protection Suite for Linux to protect critical Linux applications like SAP and databases such as Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres in VMware environments.  SIOS DataKeeper provides a unique software add-on to Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) to allow Microsoft Clusters and SQL Server workloads to run in VMware.

Real-Time Replication in VMware

SIOS software uses real-time replication to synchronize storage on the primary VM with storage on a standby VM located in the same data center, in your disaster recovery site, or both. This allows you to build VM high availability and disaster recovery configurations flexibly.  Two, three or four node clusters allow high availability configurations using local LAN and multiple hosts to be coupled with disaster recovery configurations across a WAN to a remote data center.  In the event of a disaster, the standby VM is brought into service automatically with no data loss, eliminating the hours needed for restoration from backup media. You simply access the replicated VMs in the DR site directly.

Key Benefits of SIOS High Availability Clustering in VMware

If you’re using standard high availability clustering software like Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC),  RDM is required in a VMware environment. RDM ties the virtual machines in the cluster to specific physical storage devices. This eliminates one of the great benefits of VMware – flexibility and mobility of clustered virtual machines is not possible.

SIOS SANless clusters eliminate the need to use RDM, giving you complete configuration flexibility and protecting the value VMware operations provides even when clustering virtual machines. You simply allocate separate VMDK’s for SIOS clustered virtual machines, just as you would any other virtual machines, and use SIOS data replication to achieve complete data redundancy and protection between the clustered virtual machines.

Virtual Server Protection via Real-Time Replication in Hyper-V, KVM, and XenServer

SIOS software uses real-time replication to synchronize storage on the primary VM with storage on a standby VM located in the same data center, in your disaster recovery site, or both. This allows you to build high availability and disaster recovery configurations flexibly. Two, three or four VM (node) clusters allow high availability configurations using local LAN and multiple hosts to be coupled with disaster recovery configurations across a WAN to a remote data center. In the event of a disaster, the standby VM is brought into service automatically with no data loss, eliminating the hours needed for restoration from backup media. You simply access the replicated VMs in the DR site directly.

Hyper-V Host Clusters

hyper v host clusters failover & replication

SIOS SANless software allows you to cluster entire Microsoft Hyper-V host machines at the hypervisor level for complete VM portability and failover protection. By keeping a real-time copy of the running VM synchronized on an alternate Hyper-V host, SIOS allows you to easily failover or Live Migrate a VM from one Hyper-V host to another. You can move individual VMs or all of the VMs on a host to another Hyper-V host in the cluster to eliminate downtime.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Clusters for Physical Server Environments

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Clusters for Physical Server Environments

High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions for Physical Servers

High Availability Clusters for Physical Servers

SIOS cluster software provides the enterprise-grade high availability, reliability, and flexibility needed for your most important applications when operating in physical server environments. Use SIOS Protection Suite for Linux to protect critical Linux applications like SAP and databases such as Oracle, MySQL, or Postgres.  SIOS DataKeeper provides a unique software add-on to Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) to allow Microsoft Clusters and SQL Server workloads to run on physical servers without a SAN.

SIOS software lets you use your choice of industry-standard hardware to create high availability clusters.  You can use shared storage in a SAN environment or simple, low-cost local storage. Use SIOS software to add DR protection to an existing cluster or to provide complete failover protection in Windows or Linux environments where shared storage clusters are impossible or impractical, such as cloud, virtual servers, and high-performance storage environments.

Easy to use. Easy to own. The intuitive SIOS interface lets you configure and begin using a SANless cluster in minutes. SIOS also makes monitoring and management of your clusters easy with a user-friendly management console that lets you monitor the status of protected servers, communication paths, resources, and applications.

Application and Data Protection for Server using Real-Time Replication

SIOS clusters allow high availability configurations using a local LAN and high speed synchronous block-level replication.

SIOS software uses real-time replication to synchronize storage on the primary server with storage on a standby server located in the same data center, in your disaster recovery site, or both. This allows you to build high availability and disaster recovery configurations flexibly; Two node or multi-node.

SIOS block level replication is highly optimized for performance. You can even use super fast, high-speed locally attached storage such as PCIe flash type storage devices on your physical servers to achieve very low cost, high performance, high availability configurations.  Your data is protected on the flash device and your application too.

You can mix and match SAN-based clusters with SIOS SANless clusters.  Just add SIOS SANless cluster software to a SAN-based cluster and put the third node into a remote data center or the cloud and achieve full disaster recovery protection.  In the event of a disaster, the standby remote physical server is brought into service automatically with no data loss, eliminating the hours needed for restoration from backup media.

Key Benefits of SIOS High Availability Clustering for Physical Servers

Flexibility

  • Build a cluster with your choice of hardware, software and Windows or Linux operating systems
  • Choose local storage or shared storage in single-site or in a multi-site, multi-node configuration
  • Use LAN or WAN network configurations for high-speed synchronous or asynchronous storage replication
  • Add disaster recovery to an existing SAN-based cluster

Cost Savings

  • No need for costly SAN storage hardware.
  • Use existing servers and low-cost local storage.
  • No costly vendor lock-in. Eliminate the need for identical hardware at the source and destination.

Less Risk

  • Eliminate the single point of failure risk of shared storage.

Ease of Use

  • No need for complex SAN setup
  • Simple installation
  • Intuitive console for easy ongoing monitoring and management.

Migrating to a Cloud High Availability Environment

SIOS adds the flexibility to easily migrate a physical server environment to a high availability cluster in the cloud. Add SIOS DataKeeper to a Windows Server Failover Clustering environment to create a SANless cluster in Azure, AWS or other public cloud. Use SIOS Protection Suite for high availability for Linux applications in cloud and hybrid cloud environments.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Service Level Agreements and the Four Nines are Not Enough for High Availability in the Cloud

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Service Level Agreements and the Four Nines are Not Enough for High Availability in the Cloud

Service Level Agreements and the Four Nines are Not Enough for High Availability in the Cloud

When most people think of high availability, they set four nines (99.99%) or less than five minutes of downtime every month as the baseline. But according to Dave Bermingham, Senior Technical Evangelist at SIOS Technology, in this TFiR video interview, high availability is more than that.

Dave argues that counting on nines is really a measurement that you might be judged against, but really trying to guarantee a level of nines is almost impossible. Because there’s so many points in that availability chain that can be a single point of failure. Four nines is certainly a great number to be judged against and to strive for, but overall it doesn’t mean a lot to have just four nines for my database server.

Effective High Availability Covers a Complex Availability Chain

Even with Cloud SLAs (Service Level Agreements), one can’t be fully rest assured as most cloud providers offer four nines on compute, which is only one part of the availability chain (along with network, storage, and the hops between). Bermingham warns, “There’s a million points of failure. So, trying to think that my cloud provider offers four nines so I’m covered, you’re kind of fooling yourself there. You have to look at the big picture and do what you can to identify those points of failures, to minimize the potential points of failure and to have a recovery plan, should something happen.”

When considering High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR), Bermingham believes the thing that causes the most visible downtime is human error. Bermingham also suggests that authorization and access to the system should also be restricted to reduce the point of failure. “You should only give access to those who absolutely need access to it and you should also ensure that they are highly trained and that you have all the things in place to help minimize potential oops.”

SIOS offers a single solution to meet both high availability and disaster recovery needs across a wide variety of operating systems (Windows, Linux), platforms, and applications, including SAP, SAP HANA, MaxDB, SQL Server, Oracle, and other environments running in SAN-based, shared storage configurations or SANless, local data storage configurations.

Contact us for more information.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS