Perth’s Optus Stadium gets SIOS DataKeeper with Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering for Hyper-V high availability

January 26, 2020 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

Meet Australia’s smartest and highest tech stadium – Perth’s Optus Stadium

SIOS DataKeeper™ implemented with Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering for Hyper-V high availability

SIOS DataKeeper was determined to be the only way to ensure a simple, manageable and yet cost-effective and robust solution that supported multiple integrations of devices and data securely, while also guaranteeing a high availability outcome.

The Perth Stadium, also known as Optus Stadium, is a high tech, multi-purpose stadium in Perth, Western Australia. Completed in late 2017 and officially opened in January 2018, the stadium has a capacity of over 60,000 people, making it the third-largest stadium in Australia after the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Stadium Australia. It has also been named Australia’s smartest and highest tech stadium.

According to Sascha Rhalf, Commercial Project Manager, Siemens, the Stadium is a landmark project in Western Australia that shapes the city’s skyline. It’s a high profile infrastructure development project that has been in the publics’ eye from the start due to the significant amount of government funding that the project has received.

The project itself has been a marvel, particularly for the Construction, Building Management and IT industries, given the complexity of both the building construction and IT architecture of the Stadium. Providence Solutions Australia along with Siemens and BGIS, joined forces to form a power-house team to work through the complex nature of the project and deliver one of Australia’s best Stadiums built to-date. Now nearing the end of its first year of operations, we discuss in more detail the background behind the project and the journey thus far.

The Challenge: Maintaining Availability

The highly customized-design of the Stadium made this a challenging project from the beginning. It was also a greenfield project, meaning there were no blueprints or previous examples/use cases to follow or reference. In fact, the blueprint for future similar projects was created during the project itself.

The project demanded a fit-for-purpose and tailored IT management solution that would meet all of the Stadium’s customized needs now, and into the future. The complexities of the IT design requirements ranged from high megapixel cameras, mission-critical application servers, a large number of multi-vendor integrations and dependencies, event day service delivery, and diverse vendors and ICT (Information Communications Technology) requirements. At the same time, it was important to keep to budget and timelines, as well as ensure the highest level of quality and security.

Complexity also stemmed from the fact that the very latest technologies were implemented to support the project’s future requirements. From face recognition to highly sophisticated access systems, to thousands of sensors – high tech and future-proofing technology was selected to ensure that the Stadium was equipped for the future. This meant, however, that the amount of data to be captured and stored on-site would be significant requiring a powerful solution to house and store the data securely.

The performance requirements for the technology implemented at the Stadium also gave complexity to the project. For example, the performance requirements for security video cameras alone was extraordinary. There are around 700 cameras including a significant number of ultra-high-definition cameras. The CCTV management solution is provisioned with 1Pb of scalable tiered storage for review, analytics, facial recognition and database matching.

There were also varied levels of availability requirements ranging from 99.999% (5 9’s) to 99.9% which is considered unique. It was critical to ensure that there was uninterrupted processing of data and application availability, eliminate any loss of data and transactions if a server fails, and continuous computing during repair.

The Solution for High Availability for Hyper-V Virtual Machines

Providence Solutions Australia was selected as an instrumental technology partner involved in the end-to-end solution design and build. From design to engineering, to building and implementing, they were the “brains” behind the Optus Stadium’s unified compute IT platform.

The Optus Stadium is the first-ever stadium in Australia to embrace a unified, continuous computing infrastructure platform which was highly essential given the complex nature of the project from both a building and IT perspective.

The unified continuous computing infrastructure platform is a single platform that can house multiple applications and data and features built-in resilience through fault tolerance, high availability, high performance and seamless disaster recovery capabilities. Put simply, it is a super platform – one that can cope with anything.

It was decided that a hyper-converged unified compute platform was key to the overall technology and IT build given the range of diverse systems and applications managed. Providence Solutions Australia implemented SIOS DataKeeper™ with Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering to provide high availability for their Hyper-V virtual machines. It was determined that this was the only way to ensure that there was a simple, manageable and yet cost-effective and robust solution that supported multiple integrations of devices and data securely, while also guaranteeing a high availability outcome.

The super platform and total building solution work by providing an end-to-end solution for the stadium operations. In a single platform, it contains 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.

There is a range of 3^rd party vendor applications that sit on the integrated platform including Johnson Control, Philips Dynalite, and Schindler.

The Results

The Stadium has delivered. There has been positive feedback from the public and visitors since the opening. It is a state of the art stadium as well as a workplace with transparent and intelligent security on a future proof backbone with superior analytics.

It has been built with IT security top of mind and has been built meeting all the technical specifications and performance requirements set out by Multiplex. The IT architecture and design has also taken future developments into consideration.

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SIOS Software Delivers High Availability Data Protection

March 12, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

SIOS Software Delivers High Availability Data Protection in a User-Friendly Cloud Environment

Bonfiglioli is a leading Italian design, manufacturing and distribution company that specializes in industrial automation, mobile machinery and wind energy products. With more than 3,600 employees in locations around the world, the company relies on its IT infrastructure and applications such as its business critical SAP-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application to keep business operations running smoothly.

They chose to use SIOS DataKeeper to overcome barriers to moving business-critical SAP ERP system to cloud.

The Challenge

This forward-looking company’s IT team implemented a program to move part of their IT operations into the Microsoft Azure cloud in a methodical, phased approach. Another key aspect was to leverage Azure as a Disaster Recovery site. A key component of their migration planning was ensuring that they could still meet strict SLAs for application performance and enjoy High Availability Data Protection in the cloud.

Operations in their on-premises environment were protected by VMware clustering that allows Windows Server Failover Clustering to manage a failover of operations to a secondary server in the event of an infrastructure fault or failure. Providing this type of protection in the cloud posed a challenge because guest-clustering with shared-bus disks is not a viable solution in a public cloud.

The Evaluation

Bonfiglioli considered a variety of options to protect their sensitive, business-critical SAP ERP system. They turned to their partner BGP Management Consulting for advice. Based on their extensive experience in helping companies like Bonfiglioli provide high availability protection for important application in the cloud, BGP recommended using SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition. The SIOS DataKeeper software had several key advantages. First, SIOS DataKeeper is the only certified high availability clustering solution for SAP in a public cloud. Second, BGP had firsthand experience with SIOS DataKeeper. They knew that it was very simple to install, transparent to the OS, and a proven, highly effective solution.

The Solution

Creating a cluster in VMware using Raw Device Mapping and shared-bus disks (RDM) is challenging and creates limitations for backing up the VMs. SIOS DataKeeper removed these barriers by enabling Bonfiglioli to create a cluster environment without the need for RDM. They simply created a two-node cluster in VMware. SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition added to synchronize storage in each cluster instance. The synchronized storage appears to WSFC as a single shared storage disk in their on-premises environment. The SIOS DataKeeper software also provides high availability data protection for their SAP Central Services Instance. As well as eliminates a single point of failure risk of the SAP Netweaver architecture. SIOS DataKeeper replicates an SSD-tiered disk partition in the company’s on-premises data center. Thereby allowing Bonfiglioli to restore their VMs on Microsoft Azure in the event of a disaster

The Results

Daniele Bovina, Systems Architect, Bonfiglioli said that SIOS DataKeeper product is SAP certified. Best of all, it is rock-solid and very transparent to the OS. This allows them to take advantage of all the simplicity and benefits of a Windows Server Failover Cluster. And as well as the cost-efficiencies and flexibility of the Microsoft Azure cloud.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about how SIOS helped Bonfiglioli achieve High Availability Data Protection, go here

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Delivers High Availability Protection

March 10, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Delivers High Availability Protection, Configuration Flexibility, Bandwidth Efficiency

A leading healthcare information services provider serves more than 10,000 healthcare organizations across the United States. They rely on their SQL Server databases to deliver a wide range of services. This includes revenue management, patient self-service, and patient care management systems.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition eliminated bandwidth issues, improved data protection, and significantly reduced downtime in a critical healthcare network environment.

The Environment

The company has more than 20 SQL Server clusters located in two geographically separated data centers for primary data support and disaster recovery. They also have smaller servers in their network, as well as SQL Server log shipping for disaster recovery. Because of this vast customer base and IT infrastructure, the company needed a secure, reliable High Availability Protection solution. Something that could efficiently handle heavy network traffic, limit the amount of data at risk, and reduce downtime.

The Challenge

Replication to the company’s disaster recovery site flooded bandwidth, which reduced reliability across the entire network. A reliable network is critical for maintaining and processing patient and billing data for the company’s hospital and healthcare provider clients. The company also needed a reliable, efficient High Availability Protection to improve their recovery point objective (RPO). This means that they need to significantly limit the amount of data at risk. RPO is determined by the amount of time between data protection events and how much data could be lost during a disaster recovery. The company sought to improve the recovery time objective (RTO), which is the maximum length of downtime that can be tolerated after a disaster or failure.

The Solution

The company chose SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition. But before they deployed it, they ran a proof-of-concept (POC) to ensure it would provide the required functionality. The POC was a stress test on both sides of the network, using very large simulated data files. Throughout the test, the IT staff watched SQL Server failover successfully and resume mirroring in a high change rate environment. Adding Unparalleled Configuration Flexibility, SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software provides efficient host-based, block-level replication to synchronize storage on the SAN with local storage in their DR site. It adds the configuration flexibility to create a Windows Server Failover Clustering environment using your choice of SAN-based, SANless, or hybrid storage. After SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition passed the company’s stringent POC testing, they deployed it into their production environment. They created a three-node cluster. Comprising two SAN-based nodes in their primary, on-premises data center and one SANless node in their remote disaster recovery site.

The Results

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition synchronized replication among all three nodes in the cluster. At the same, it eliminated the bandwidth issue at the disaster recovery site. The company saw substantial improvement in both recovery point and recovery time objectives and reduced the cost of bandwidth. The company now uses SIOS DataKeeper to protect their important SQL Server in more than 18 cluster nodes.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about how SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Delivers High Availability Protection, go here

SIOS DataKeeper Provides High Availability for Mission-Critical Systems

March 8, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

SIOS DataKeeper Provides High Availability for Mission-Critical Systems

By adding SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to a Windows Server Failover Clustering environment in the Amazon Web Services cloud, this global retailer migrated a complex infrastructure into the cloud easily and without any downtime.

SIOS Software Delivers High Availability Data Protection in a User-Friendly Cloud Environment

A global multichannel video game, consumer electronics, and wireless services retailer has more than 7,600 stores worldwide. When the retailer decided to migrate its infrastructure to a Windows environment in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, they needed a secure, reliable solution that could handle thousands of customer transactions daily and scale to meet growing demand. The migration needed to be accomplished quickly and easily with no downtime. Keeping the existing EMS instances was a mandatory requirement.

The Challenge

For this migration to be successful, the retailer needed an easy, cost efficient way to provide High Availability for Mission-Critical Systems.

The Solution

To meet these requirements, the retailer’s IT staff simply added SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to a Windows Server Failover Clustering environment in the AWS cloud.

The SIOS software is fully integrated with WSFC. It provides an easy-to-use configuration wizard for fast, efficient setup. This cluster maintains high availability for the retailer’s mission-critical software. If WSFC fails over to the remote cluster node, SIOS DataKeeper ensures the application has immediate access to a mirror copy of the storage. The retailer’s operations can continue after a failover without downtime or data loss. SIOS software created a fault-resilient environment that meets the retailer’s high-availability requirements.

The Results

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provided the retailer the High Availability for Mission-Critical Systems that they needed. And at the same time, eliminated the risks associated with a single point of failure in shared storage SAN cluster configurations. The SIOS failover process enabled automatic system and application recovery and prevented data loss if a server goes down. This allows the retailer’s customers to shop and place orders online safely without any interruptions.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about in details how SIOS provided High Availability for Mission-Critical Systems, go here

ALYN Hospital Ensures High Availability And Disaster Recovery Protection

March 7, 2019 by Jason Aw Leave a Comment

ALYN Hospital Ensures High Availability And Disaster Recovery Protection For Its Critical Applications with SIOS DataKeeper

SIOS Chosen for its Cost-effectiveness and Application-agnostic Design

SAN MATEO, CA – March 5, 2019 – SIOS Technology Corp., the industry pioneer in providing intelligent application availability for critical workloads, today announced that ALYN Hospital is using SIOS DataKeeper software to provide high availability and disaster recovery protection for all of ALYN Hospital’s mission-critical applications. This includes electronic medical records, customer relationship management, SQL Server databases, Exchange and Office.

ALYN Hospital is acknowledged worldwide as a premier pediatric rehabilitation hospital in Israel. ALYN specializes in diagnosing and rehabilitating infants, children, and adolescents with physical disabilities, both congenital and acquired.

The IT Department at ALYN Hospital operates a variety of applications in a virtualized Microsoft Windows Server environment. “As a hospital, we are subject to some fairly strict government regulations, so we needed to implement strong business continuity provisions for many of our applications,” explained Uri Inbar, ALYN’s IT Director.

Hyper-V Replica, which is integral to Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor, was an obvious choice for ALYN’s business continuity needs. The IT Department operates two, physically-separated server rooms on premises, which enables all critical virtual machines running on any Hyper-V host server to be replicated to another in the other room. “We were really struggling to satisfy our recovery point and recovery time objectives with this arrangement, so we started investigating other options,” Inbar recalled.

The Evaluation Criteria

To evaluate third-party failover clustering software, Inbar established three criteria: The solution had to work with existing hardware; it had to provide both high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) protections all of the hospital’s critical applications, and the total cost had to fit within the department’s limited budget. The IT staff quickly narrowed the third-party options to two, and after carefully evaluating both, found that only one met all of its criteria: DataKeeper from SIOS Technologies. “While we needed a solution that was cost-effective, we were determined not to sacrifice quality or capabilities,” Inbar emphasized. “With SIOS we found a solution that delivers carrier-class capabilities with a remarkably low total cost of ownership. For us, it was an obvious choice.”

The Results

SIOS DataKeeper is ideal for ALYN Hospital’s needs for high availability and disaster recovery protection. Because it is purpose-built to provide both HA and DR protections in a single, cost-effective solution. The ability to create 3-node SANless failover clusters with a single active and two standby instances has proven to be especially valuable for ALYN’s needs. “We are updating systems and software continuously, and with DataKeeper we can do that without any disruption to operations,” noted Inbar. Because the data replication supports multiple standbys and enables manual, dynamic assignment of the active and standby instances, the active instance can be moved to any server in a 3-node cluster and remain fully protected during periods of planned hardware and software maintenance.

Other SIOS DataKeeper features that are important to ALYN’s needs include the ability to work with any type of storage and WAN-optimized data replication. “The SIOS cluster seamlessly supports any storage volume recognized by Windows, and this substantially simplifies operations while enabling us to utilize all of our storage resources,” Inbar explained. Additionally, the WAN optimization will prove useful as Inbar and his team implement the remote disaster recovery site.

Inbar is confident the SIOS SANless failover cluster will perform as desired when needed: “We test the configuration regularly and routinely change the active and standby designations while redirecting the data replication as needed during planned software updates, and the applications have always continued to run uninterrupted. It just works and that’s very reassuring.”

“Whether your company’s critical applications are operating in a physical server environment, a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid cloud, they must be protected from downtime and data loss,” said Jerry Melnick, president and CEO, SIOS Technology. “ALYN is using SIOS to provide a fast, cost-effective high-availability solution for applications in a virtualized environment. I applaud them for their use case and innovation and look forward to continuing to provide value to their HA and DR strategies.”

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes software products that provide insights and guidance that IT managers need to manage and protect business-critical applications in large, complex data centers. The company’s SIOS iQ is a machine learning analytics software that helps IT managers optimize performance, efficiency, reliability, and capacity utilization in virtualized environments. SIOS SAN and SANLess software is an essential part of any cluster solution that 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. 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.

SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS iQ, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, SIOS PERC Dashboard, 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.