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

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.

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

Retail

Protecting Retailers from Downtime and Disasters

Information is the lifeblood of every retail enterprise— purchase, sale, and inventory information tied into a point of sale or real-time information about customer preferences. SIOS clustering software provides HA/DR protection for all critical applications important to retail businesses.

Reliable Application Protection Across All Environments

SIOS provides simple, cost-efficient protection for systems running on-premises, in cloud and hybrid cloud environments. Our systems are application-aware, ensuring fast, reliable cluster failover in compliance with application-specific best practices.

SIOS Technology protects your most important applications, databases, and operational systems from unplanned infrastructure, network, and application failures.

Zero Downtime Maintenance

Perform ongoing maintenance for your application servers without disruption to your business.