SIOS SANless clusters

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Archives for November 2014

SIOS Exhibits SANLess Clustering Software for SQL at PASS Summit

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SIOS Technology to Exhibit Its SANLess Clustering Software for SQL Server in at PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle

SAN MATEO, CA – October 30, 2014 – SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com), maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced it will showcase its SAN and SANLess clustering software at PASS Summit 2014. This annual event is the world’s largest, most-focused, and most-intensive conference for Microsoft SQL Server and BI professionals. Over 2,000 companies from around the world send their staff to receive top-notch training, technical tips, and make connections to take their SQL Server skills to the next level. As an exhibitor and sponsor of a breakfast panel and PASS to Prizes, SIOS will showcase its product offerings in booth #408 in the PASS Summit Exhibit Hall at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, WA, November 4 – 7.

The SIOS Exhibit
In booth #408, SIOS will showcase its products that add real-time block level replication and configuration flexibility in Windows Server Failover Clustering environments. SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is an ingredient that integrates seamlessly with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) to provide SANLess cluster protection where shared storage clusters are either impossible or impractical, such as cloud, virtual and high performance storage environments.

PASS the Bacon: SQL Server Experts and MVPs Breakfast Panel
SIOS and SanDisk are co-sponsoring the PASS the Bacon breakfast at PASS Summit 2014, which will be held on Thursday, November 6, at 6:45 am and will feature an interactive panel discussion with four SQL Server experts and MVPs about a variety of real-world strategies for achieving cost-efficient high performance and high availability in SQL Server. Topics include: Maintaining high performance in high availability SQL Server environments, cost-efficient techniques for protecting SQL Server from downtime, and leveraging flash storage in database scenarios for more than performance. Register here to attend.

PASS to Prizes
SIOS is also a sponsor of the ever popular PASS to Prizes game November 4-6. Attendees must stop by and collect a stamp from various booths in the Exhibit Hall to be eligible to win a prize. Look for the game card in your conference attendee bag. Drawings for PASS to Prizes will take place at 4:35pm on Thursday, November 6, to win one of the following: Microsoft Surface Pro 3, Xbox One Madden NFL 15 Bundle, Cannon Rebel DSR Camera, or Beats by Dr. Dre Wireless Headphones.

Additionally, SIOS is raffling off two $250 gift cards. Visit its booth #408 for a chance to win. The drawings will take place at 12:30 pm on Friday, November 7.

SIOS will also be awarding a $10 Starbucks gift card once per hour throughout the show to randomly selected participants who are wearing the official SIOS PASS t-shirt on the show floor.

Denny Cherry Presents SQL Karaoke
SIOS is also sponsoring “Denny Cherry presents SQL Karaoke” on Tuesday, November 4, 9:00pm – 2:00am at Cowgirls Inc., 421 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104. Registration is mandatory for SQL Karaoke. Register here: http://us.sios.com/2014-11-sql-karaoke/.

About SIOS Technology Corp.
SIOS Technology Corp. makes SAN and #SANLess software solutions that make clusters easy to use and easy to own. An essential part of any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and #SANLess software provides the flexibility to build Clusters Your Way™ to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment in any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) without sacrificing performance or availability. The unique SIOS #SANLess clustering solution allows you to configure clusters with local storage, eliminating both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared (SAN) storage.

Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (http://us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

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SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, and associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of SIOS Technology Corp. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:
Beth Winkowski
Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS
Phone: 978-649-7189
Email: bethwinkowski@US.SIOS.com

CIO Insight: Building an IT Framework to Improve Performance

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Mavis Discount Tire, a fast-growing chain of tire stores in the northeast U.S., turns to clustering software to build a high-availability IT infrastructure.

Managing any fast-growing business can present huge IT challenges. For Mavis Discount Tire, an independent chain with 160 stores and service centers in New York State, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, managing everything from inventory and a call center to online appointment scheduling is critical.

“We are technology-oriented retailer,” explains CIO Edward Schwartz. “It is important that we meet increasingly demanding business requirements.”

The company, which has roots extending back to the late 1940s, has motored into the digital age. “We have a lot of database-driven applications and we have an enormous need for redundancy,” Schwartz says. “So, it was important to build an IT framework that supports our need for performance.”

Several years ago, the company turned to Microsoft Cluster Server. That way, “If a server fails, another will take over,” he adds. “Our Website and various services operate 24×7, so we need to be fault-tolerant.”

However, the clustering technology introduced another set of challenges, including how to handle storage. The conventional approach would have been to use a storage area network (SAN), but with two or more servers in a cluster that share data, “Achieving optimal performance requires attention to detail on some extremely expensive equipment,” Schwartz says.

What’s more, the approach introduces another point of failure. “Now you have a shared storage array that you need to make redundant,” he points out. “So you have added a substantial amount of equipment and additional complexity.”

Mavis Discount Tire began exploring ways to more efficiently manage IT within a clustered environment. It eventually turned to SIOS Technology’s SANless clustering software to achieve high availability for its business-critical MS SQL Server applications and databases.

The system relies on local storage instead of a SAN, and it provides real-time replication of data for better synchronization, as well as failover and business continuity. Since implementing the solution, the company has added physical and virtual servers and has achieved a high level of flexibility about how it uses them.

For example, “We can now say, ‘We want to move 10 servers and split them between location A and location B,'” Schwartz explains. “We can shut down one node of the cluster and move that cluster over to a LAN at another location for additional redundancy or for other reasons that might involve performance or where users are located.”

In addition, the IT department now has greater flexibility in terms of turning physical servers on and off. “In a mission-critical environment, we cannot afford to turn a machine off—or have a failure and wait 15 minutes for it to come back online,” he adds.

In the end, the SIOS clustering software has reduced the need for multiple SANs, dedicated and redundant external switches, and the associated IT administration and oversight that comes with a more complex IT infrastructure. In many cases, it’s now possible to roll out applications and servers, such as a VoIP phone system, without engaging in any additional design. The company simply purchases additional licenses, and the servers replicate the existing configurations and data.

“We make an effort to use information technology as efficiently as possible,” Schwartz says. “The ability to manage clusters and storage allows us to react to conditions and events quickly and expand when needed.”

Read More at CIOInsight.com

Live Webinar: High Availability for Mission Critical Applications in Amazon EC2

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Next week our cloud clustering expert Tony Tomarchio will be joining Vikram Garlapati, Amazon Web Services solutions architect, for a 45 minute dive into providing high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) protection in the cloud. They will be discussing ways to leverage #SANLess clusters to enable HA/DR for SQL, SAP, File Servers, and other enterprise-class applications running in Amazon EC2.

You’ll also learn a bit about Spirent, an enterprise company who recently took the leap into the Amazon cloud and how they are currently using #SANLess Clusters to protect their business critical applications in Amazon EC2.

High Availability for Mission Critical Applications

Wednesday, November 19, 2014
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Register Now — Space is Limited

About the Speakers

Tony Tomarchio
Director of Field Engineering, SIOS Technology

As SIOS’ Director of Field Engineering, Tony is responsible for defining and delivering technical pre-sales services, support and best practices to SIOS customers, prospects and partners. Tony has more than a decade of experience providing systems management and high availability solutions to enterprise customers. Prior to joining SIOS, Tony served as the Global Sales Engineering lead for the Oracle systems management practice. Tony joined Oracle through the acquisitions of Sun Microsystems and Aduva, Inc., where he served as the lead Sales Engineer / Technical Account Manager and played a critical role in product adoption and evolution.

Vikram Garlapati
Manager Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services

Vikram has over seventeen years of professional software development experience, focusing in database systems, web and mobile applications. Vikram has worked with AWS for the past three years as a solution architect and manager supporting consulting partner ecosystem. Vikram has architected and built large data warehouses and large data intensive applications. Currently, Vikram is managing a global team of solution architects supporting consulting partners located in North American, India and LATAM regions.

Live Webinar: SQL Clustering 102: Highly Available SQL Deployments in Azure IaaS – What You Need to Know

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Microsoft MVP David Bermingham will lay the foundation for deploying highly available SQL Server instances in the Windows Azure IaaS Cloud in his second “SQL Clustering 101” webinar series. From basic nomenclature to the must-haves and gotcha’s for enabling SQL Server High Availability in Azure, you will have the checklist for moving your business-critical applications to the cloud. If you are considering Windows Azure for your next SQL Server deployment, you won’t want to miss this webinar.

Register Now

Date: December 9, 2014
Time: 10:00a PST — 1:00pm EST

About Dave Bermingham

David Bermingham is recognized within the technology community as a high availability expert and has been honored by his peers by being elected to be a Microsoft MVP in clustering since 2010. David’s work as director, technical evangelist at SIOS Technology Corp., has him focused on Microsoft high availability and disaster recovery solutions as well as providing hands on support, training and professional services for cluster implementations. David holds numerous technical certifications and draws from more than twenty years of experience in IT, including work in the finance, healthcare and education fields, to help organizations design solutions to meet their high availability and disaster recovery needs. Learn more at www.us.sios.com