Clustering Simplified Archives - Page 25 of 104

Achieving HA/DR for SQL Server Without Breaking the Bank

June 30, 2023 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Achieving HA/DR for SQL Server Without Breaking the Bank

High availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) are essential requirements for all database environments, especially mission-critical ones. However, many businesses face challenges in achieving HA/DR without significantly inflating costs. If you’re grappling with these issues, this article will shed light on an effective solution.

SQL Server Standard Edition is widely used, but it comes with certain limitations: it supports only two nodes in a cluster. However, by leveraging the capabilities of SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition, you can overcome this limitation, enabling replication of data to a third node for disaster recovery.

This strategy could save you over 70% on your SQL Server licensing by allowing you to use SQL Server Standard Edition to create a SANLess SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) instead of upgrading to SQL Server Enterprise Edition and using Always On Availability Groups.

This blog post aims to guide you through the process of using SIOS DataKeeper for data recovery on a third node that is not part of the cluster.

Configuring Your Nodes

In this scenario, let’s consider that you have two nodes, namely DataKeeper-1 and DataKeeper-2, configured in a cluster. These nodes have their E drive replicating with each other. Also, DataKeeper-1 is replicating to a third node, DataKeeper-3, which is not part of the cluster. It’s important to note that with SQL Server Standard Edition, the third node can never be part of the cluster.

Preparing the Third Node

Firstly, ensure that DataKeeper-3 is separate from the cluster. With this, you now have a two-node cluster (DataKeeper-1 and DataKeeper-2) with SQL Server configured as a failover cluster instance, but still replicating to the third node, DataKeeper-3, using SIOS DataKeeper.

Navigating a Disaster Recovery Process

So, how would this work in an actual disaster? Here are the steps you would need to follow:

Simulate a Disaster: In this case, to simulate a disaster, we take SQL Server offline on the cluster (DataKeeper 1 and 2).
Switch to DataKeeper 3: With SQL Server offline, we switch over to DataKeeper-3. The volume E on DataKeeper 3, however, is initially not accessible.
Unlock the Volume: To unlock the volume on DataKeeper-3, you would need to execute a command-line operation as shown in the tutorial video called ‘emcmd . switchovervolume’
Attach Databases: In a real disaster, you’ll want to have a standalone instance of SQL Server running on DataKeeper-3. From this standalone instance, you could then attach the user-defined databases.
Replicate Back to the Cluster: Data written on DataKeeper-3 is replicated back to DataKeeper-1 and DataKeeper-2. This can be verified using the SIOS DataKeeper interface.

Post-Disaster Recovery

Once the disaster is resolved, you can switch back the volume to the original source using a similar process.

By leveraging SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition, you can implement a robust, cost-effective, and efficient high availability/disaster recovery strategy for your SQL Server environment. This process not only helps save significant costs by eliminating the need for upgrading to SQL Server Enterprise Edition, but it also ensures data availability and a quick recovery during a disaster.

Check out this video for a complete walkthrough of the process and ensure your SQL Server remains resilient, without breaking the bank.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Financial Services

June 25, 2023 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Financial Services

For banks, credit unions, payment services, and other financial services organizations, a few minutes of downtime for critical system can be expensive and detrimental to both the organization and its brand. Downtime can cause customer dissatisfaction, negative press and social media, drained IT resources, regulatory issues, and reduced end user productivity.

SIOS clustering software provides flexible, cost-efficient high availability (99.99% application uptime) and disaster protection for a wide range of critical transactional, processing, and administrative system, including, accounting, online banking, payment management, mobile stock trading, peer-to-peer lending and many more; on premises and in cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud environments.

Protect transactional, processing and administrative financial systems in Windows or Linux environments
Monitor and protect application operation and availability
Move critical systems to the cloud without sacrificing HA or configuration flexibility
Minimize the need for failover with automatic restart functionality
Reliable failover with application-specific intelligence

HA in the Cloud

Cloud infrastructure does not automatically provide application-level HA or disaster recovery protection. Cloud availability service-level agreements apply only to the hardware, which may not ensure that an application or database remains accessible.

SIOS HA clustering for applications in the cloud fails over across both cloud regions and availability zones. Traditional shared storage clustering in the cloud is costly and complex to configure, and is sometimes not available. SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides block-level replication to synchronize local storage among each cluster node. This enables a standby node to access an identical copy of the primary node storage and an RPO of zero.

Meet Stringent Availability SLAs

SIOS clustering software monitors application availability and if a threat is detected, this software moves the application operations to a standby server where operation continues with minimal downtime and near zero data loss.

Disaster Recovery

Some applications need protection from disasters that damage the local IT infrastructure on premises or in the cloud. SIOS clustering software enables failover across geographically separated cluster nodes and across cloud regions and availability zones for complete DR protection.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Call Center & CAD

June 21, 2023 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Call Center & CAD

Computer Aided Dispatch and CAD2CAD

In today’s complex public safety environments, the need for information coordination is more vital than ever before. SIOS knows that the availability and reliability of computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems can be a matter of life and death. These systems enable emergency 911 operators and dispatchers to prioritize and record incident calls, dispatch first responders, and coordinate response. CAD systems capture and disseminate critical information such as, the incident type and location, the location and availability of police, EMT, and fire teams; and known site hazards; in real time. It’s prudent to ensure there uptime. Due to the urgent nature of these systems, even brief downtime for CAD and CAD2CAD systems could delay response time and impede coordination of resources in dynamic emergency situations. Some communities pool their emergency resources for efficiency and fast response. They connect CAD systems using CAD2CAD software for inter-community, inter-agency coordination and collaboration.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

SIOS clustering software provides high availability and disaster protection for CAD systems, effectively ensuring 99.99% uptime availability. SIOS software monitors the CAD application environment and if it detects an issue, automatically fails over operation to a standby cluster node.

HA for CAD Systems in Windows

If your CAD or CAD2CAD system runs on Microsoft Windows Servers, add SIOS DataKeeper software to a Windows Server Failover Clustering environment to eliminate the cost and downtime risk of shared storage.

Cut Software Licensing Costs

There are multiple ways to create a cloud-based CAD or CAD2CAD hub that is protected from downtime and disasters. SIOS software monitors the CAD or CAD2CAD hub application to detect problems and ensure it is operational. If an issue arises, it automatically orchestrates failover to standby cluster servers. For system running on Microsoft Windows Servers, simply add SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition for simple, cost-efficient SANless clustering. SIOS DataKeeper host-based, block level replication replicates and synchronizes local storage data to the standby server quickly and efficiently – without slowing down or interfering with the operation of the CAD and/or CAD2CAD system.

Reproduced from permission from SIOS

Building Management & Security

June 17, 2023 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Building Management & Security

SIOS appreciates that every aspect of building management and security (BMS) —from monitoring and surveillance systems to computerized maintenance management to power management systems, relies on critical applications and data. SIOS high availability clustering software protects these critical systems from unplanned failures at any level; infrastructure, network, and application and through local, regional, and/or site-wide disasters.

Video Management Systems (VMS)

Electronic monitoring and surveillance systems may comprise a wide range of subsystems, including video management systems, access control systems, perimeter protection, physical security information management (PSIM) software, fire safety systems and others. Even brief downtime for these systems could put the entire facility at risk of intrusion, theft, vandalism, fire.

Across All Platforms and Operating Systems

Whether these systems are running in virtualized environments (VMware, Hyper-V), traditional on-premises, or cloud environments, SIOS clustering software protects applications without the need for specialized hardware or configuration restrictions. Use SIOS DataKeeper with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) for robust HA/DR protection without the cost and complexity of shared storage. Use SIOS Protection Suite for Linux for powerful application-aware clustering in a Linux environment.

Building Management

Total building management solutions work by providing an end-to-end solution for all building operations in a single platform. They are a convergence of multiple systems, spanning video surveillance management, recording and archival, voice, data, storage, industrial monitoring (SCADA systems), HVAC, building and power management, security systems, video intercoms, irrigation, billboards, lifts, and lighting control. Many are designed as a powerful platform that integrates multiple vendor applications within it including product from Johnson Control, Philips Dynalite, and Schneider Electric and others.

SIOS DataKeeper integrates with Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering to deliver simple, cost efficient, high availability for virtual (VMware or Hyper-V) machines that supported multiple integrations of devices and data security. SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux delivers robust, application-aware HA/DR protection for systems running in open source environments.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS