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Achieve High Availability Data Replication In Cluster Solution With SIOS

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Achieve high availability data replication in cluster solution with SIOS

High Availability, Data Replication, Cluster Solution Guards Institution’s Linux-based Resources From Downtime

Serving nearly 19,000 students and supporting nearly 170 academic programs, Boise State University is Idaho’s largest university. The university needed a cluster solution offering high availability data replication. The data protection requirements include maintaining continuous availability of their Linux-based network file system and replication of all data and applications located within its Linux Red Hat server environment. To ensure students, faculty and staff have continuous access to Blackboard resources, Boise State IT staff implemented a SIOS #SANLess cluster using SIOS Protection Suite for Linux solution. This cluster uses local attached storage for each server in the cluster. SIOS software keeps this storage synchronized using real time block-level replication. It eliminates the cost, complexity, and single point of failure risk of traditional shared storage clusters.

The Challenge

The school did not want anyone to lose their data, hence the importance of having high availability data replication. The systems must experience very little downtime, if any. In addition, the university wanted technology that was easy to implement and maintain. And at the same time, provide the highest level of protection and availability of data and applications contained inside the Red Hat servers.

Getting A High Availability Data Replication Cluster Solution

The Boise State University IT department implemented a cluster solution using SIOS software. This cluster maintains high availability for their Blackboard and other critical applications and data by monitoring system and application health, preserving client connectivity and providing uninterrupted data access. If SIOS Protection Suite detects a failure in the application, network, or server hardware, it attempts to restart the application. If the restart fails, it automatically moves operations to backup servers and redundant copies of the data in the Linux cluster through a system failover process. The solution also enables continuous operations during planned downtime for maintenance or upgrades. SIOS software creates a fault resilient environment that meets the University’s stringent high availability requirements. SIOS Protection Suite for Linux works on both physical servers and virtual machines.

Benefits

SIOS software not only provides failover and disaster recovery protection, but it also eliminates the risk associated with a single point of failure contained in shared storage SAN cluster configurations. The SIOS failover process enables automatic system and application recovery if a server goes down.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about how SIOS helped Boise State University achieve high availability data replication in their cluster solution, go here

Meet Your Failover And Disaster Recovery Needs With SIOS

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Meet Your Failover And Disaster Recovery Needs With SIOS

SIOS Software Ensures 24/7 Availability, Failover And Disaster Recovery Of Theatre’s Online Ticketing System

The theatre with the highest regular annual attendance in the United Kingdom uses SIOS Protection Suite software. The software safeguard the online ticketing system keeping it available 24/7, even in the event of software bugs, hardware failure or unanticipated outages. SIOS Protection Suite meets Birmingham Hippodrome’s failover, replication and disaster recovery needs. The company moved off a hosted server and onto its own in-house networking infrastructure. By doing so, the theatre has freed itself to develop a new marketing strategy based around its website and database of customers.

The Challenge

Birmingham Hippodrome wrote a detailed specification. It called for a new network infrastructure that would deliver full failover and disaster recovery, with no single point of failure. The new infrastructure would need to be flexible and resilient. It would also need to enable them to tailor the system to improve marketing around its website and database of customers. That meant the infrastructure would essentially need to run all back office tasks. This includes a new e-mail system, the theatre’s own ticket booking, de-booking and credit card service.

The Solution

To deliver full failover and disaster recovery protection, IT infrastructure consultancy eSpida built two server rooms approximately one mile apart. Each replicating to the other. If one server failed, the other server would continue operations. They also implemented two leased lines and established two service providers at two points in the city with two separate main supplies. Birmingham wanted to simplify server “housekeeping.” The Hippodrome’s network infrastructure has been virtualised with 20 virtualised servers on IBM x3650 hardware and twin dual-core CPUs with 32 GB RAM and local disk. They use SIOS software to ensure continuous availability of applications and the online ticketing system.

SIOS Protection Suite creates a “mirrored” server system on the remote site that is identical to the primary server. If the primary server fails, SIOS software can shut it down and transfer all operations to the backup server while providing continuous access to applications and data. This capability ensures that both Birmingham Hippodrome staff and customers shopping for tickets online are unaffected by system failures or maintenance. SIOS software monitors system and application health, maintains client connectivity. It provides uninterrupted data access, giving Birmingham Hippodrome the reliable, fault-resilient system they need.

Benefit Of Failover And Disaster Recovery Solution

Another benefit of SIOS software is that installation and set-up is a quick and hassle-free process. High availability and protection of the theatre’s overall operations may have seemed like a daunting task. But SIOS Protection Suite was installed, configured, tested and in production within a few days.

For the first six months of operation, one of the servers was freezing up about once a month. In each case, SIOS software failed over to the back-up server in under a minute. The few initial instances of server failure went largely unnoticed, thanks to SIOS.

SIOS software enables Hippodrome to provide a total solution that includes hardware, installation, as well as supplementary services related to disaster recovery.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about how SIOS can meet your failover and disaster recovery needs, go here

Ensure Business Continuity And High Availability With SIOS

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Ensure Business Continuity And High Availability With SIOS

Alstom Protects Beijing Metro Maintenance System For Business Continuity And High Availability With SIOS Protection Suite

Alstom Transport implemented SIOS software to safeguard maintenance system services for Beijing Metro. They also wanted to a solution that offered business continuity and high availability. They are a global leader in equipment and services for power generation and rail transport. They have selected SIOS to protect data and mission-critical applications used in the maintenance system services for Beijing Metro Line 2.

The Challenge

Alstom integrates the Urbalis™ solution. It is the most advanced signalling system in the world. As the brain and the nervous system of a mass transit network, its function is to control train movement and ensure train safety and optimize traffic operations. All this while providing system maintenance. In addition, its Maintenance Supervision System (MSS) centralizes detection of failures in trackside equipment. The system also provides remote diagnostics to forecast train stopping with swift and efficient replacement of faulty equipment. To manage these sophisticated maintenance systems, the Alstom Transport Urbalis R&D team needed a Linux environment virtual solution to give its client business continuity and high availability. And at the same time, optimizing the cost of ownership throughout the lifetime of the urban transport system.

The Solution

The team conducted extensive and thorough research for the best solution to meet their requirements. Finally, the Alstom IT team selected SIOS Protection Suite for Linux. It is a software application that ensures the continuous availability of applications and data by creating a fault resilient environment for virtual machines. SIOS software monitors applications to ensure that any fault is automatically detected and rectified while maintaining uninterrupted services.

Benefits

SIOS Protection Suite is ideal for any company seeking business continuity and high availability during downtime. It enables continuous operations of the Alstom maintenance system during planned downtime for maintenance or upgrades. This also applies in the event of a system failure or if an application ceases to respond. Alstom determined that it could reach a 99.995% uptime rate for their business critical applications. If the first server goes down due to an electrical outage or to unavailability of a network connection, data will be protected while applications failover to the second server. This failover capability provides a service window for maintenance to be conducted on the first server while the second server continues to operate. This means Alstom can plan for a maximum downtime of only two minutes (the time it takes to complete a failover). The SIOS solution also enables fault diagnostics to be sent remotely to operators. Therefore, it is no longer necessary for the Alstom team to ask operators to proactively check each deployed server individually.

To find out how SIOS products, go here
To read about how you can also achieve business continuity and high availability, go here

Agentrics Uses SIOS As Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity Solution

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Agentrics Uses SIOS As Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity Solution

Global Provider Of Retail And Supply Chain Solutions Uses SIOS Protection Suite For Linux For Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity Solution

Agentrics is a provider of supply chain solutions for its roster of high-profile retail customers. The company faces tremendous pressure to maintain continuous application availability. If a failure prevented their customers from accessing its solutions, their customers’ schedules and planning would be affected. Thereby potentially resulting in a loss of time and money due to failure driven delays. Agentrics had a critical need for a disaster recovery and business continuity solution to maintain the security of its important data.

The Challenge

Before implementing the SIOS solution, Agentrics relied on the high availability (HA) clustering solution that accompanied its SUN servers for data protection. The company planned to move to a Linux platform. IT staff knew they needed an HA clustering solution. They wanted something that was both easy to deploy and comparable in protection to its previous SUN clustering solution. After conducting a thorough evaluation of HA options, Agentrics chose SIOS Protection Suite for Linux for its disaster recovery and business continuity solution .

Finding A Disaster Recovery And Business Continuity Solution

SIOS Protection Suite for Linux provides continuous data availability by creating a fault resilient environment. It also incorporates application awareness capabilities that create, change, and manage availability. All these while protecting the company’s entire system stack through a single intuitive GUI. Furthermore, its application aware feature contains the ability to understand the interdependencies that occur between all system components. This is as compared to competitors whose same feature is limited to only monitoring the hardware, operating system and database.

Most Comprehensive And Scalable Solution

The SIOS solution’s advanced features make it the ideal choice for customers that are in the process of migrating their critical business applications and databases from proprietary UNIX to Linux systems. The solution’s unique makeup provides companies, such as Agentrics, many benefits. It includes the flexibility and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) savings that are associated with open source platforms. For Agentrics, SIOS Protection Suite for Linux was a key enabler. It reduced the TCO for the migrated systems by 40 percent. In addition, SIOS Protection Suite for Linux is recognized as the industry’s most comprehensive and scalable solution for eliminating application downtime from either planned or unplanned outages. Its disaster recovery and business continuity solution operates within the most stringent SLA uptime requirements. Ranging from local data replication and application failover to complete recovery from a remote site.

Benefits

For the past four years, Agentrics has relied on SIOS Protection Suite for Linux for disaster recovery and business continuity solution. During this time the company has not experienced any critical issues thanks to the solution’s unique clustering techniques. For the handful of issues that have surfaced since the solution was deployed in Agentrics’ environment, SPS for Linux was able to immediately detect them and take the appropriate pre-defined action. As a result, Agentrics has been able to maintain uptime in excess of its SLA agreements.

To find out how SIOS products, go here
To read more about disaster recovery and business continuity solution, go here

Enhance failover capabilities for disaster recovery with SIOS LifeKeeper

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Enhance failover capabilities for disaster recovery with SIOS LifeKeeper

DICE Corporation Protects Integrated Security Solutions With Failover Capabilities For Disaster Recovery Using SIOS LifeKeeper For Linux®

DICE Corporation specializes in creating integrated solutions for the residential and commercial security industry.

Full Failover Capabilities For Clients

In addition to creating software that is installed at its clients’ locations, DICE also uses a complete standby facility to provide clients with full failover capabilities for disaster recovery. DICE mirrors file systems. If a failure occurs at a client site, the client’s mirrored system is automatically mounted on a standby system, without interrupting work on the remaining standby system. In all cases, assuring high availability is absolutely critical to the health of DICE’s business and its clients’ businesses as well.

The Partnership

After a thorough review of solutions in the marketplace, Hardware Support Manager Steve Senk and his team downloaded and tested LifeKeeper for Linux. Immediately, they saw its promise and began implementation.

“It has a nice visual GUI. A lot of similarities with the interface that we were accustomed to with our previous HA solution. Additionally, the pricing was very comparable. Overall, the package was very appealing,” noted Senk. The DICE team was able to migrate all of its applications and services to Linux with the assurance of high availability. This is all thanks to LifeKeeper for Linux and LifeKeeper Data Replication. Software application SIOS’ LifeKeeper for Linux ensures all applications, data and system connectivity is sustained. System uptime is maximized. LifeKeeper provides high availability of clustered Linux systems by monitoring system and application health, client connectivity. The software deliver uninterrupted data access regardless of where clients reside – on the corporate Internet, intranet or extranet. SIOS LifeKeeper data replication is an industry-proven solution on Windows and Linux. It provides dynamic, disk-level replication of data across local and wide area networks.

 The Result

Since adding LifeKeeper support, hundreds of clients have signed on for DICE’s failover service, with over 50 installations in place within DICE’s facilities. DICE’s customers’ sites have required failover capabilities for disaster recovery or for other variety of reasons since LifeKeeper was implemented. Each time, the software has helped DICE support seamless availability. “The need for failovers has come as a result of a variety of situations. It could be a cleaning guy plugging something in and blowing a circuit, or a power surge from a storm,” said Senk. “Regardless of the cause, LifeKeeper is there for these problems. We’ve had nothing but success.” Looking ahead, DICE is planning to offer its clients a disaster recovery service leveraging LifeKeeper for Linux. Clients can use their own servers. Yet also replicate up to seven machines remotely, regardless of where in the world their servers are located.

To read more about this case study, go here.
To find out how you can also enjoy failover capabilities for disaster recovery on Linux, go here