SIOS SANless clusters

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Protecting Applications and Databases

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Protecting Applications and Databases

Protecting Applications and Databases

Application High Availability & Disaster Recovery Solutions

Enterprises of all sizes rely on a wide variety of business-critical database applications including data warehouses, e-commerce applications, financial systems, supply chain management, and business intelligence systems. These environments require high availability protection against lost revenue, lost productivity and lost customer satisfaction resulting from application downtime.

SIOS software enables enterprises to implement high availability clustering to protect these from downtime at a fraction of the cost and complexity of previous solutions. SIOS software operates across the widest variety of operating systems, applications and databases in flexible configurations across cloud, hybrid cloud, physical servers, and virtualized environments.

Protecting Linux Applications and Databases

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux offers integrated data replication, high availability clustering and disaster recovery solutions supporting Oracle on both Linux and Windows to provide fault-resilient protection for the most demanding enterprise deployments. With SIOS SANless clusters, you don’t need expensive shared storage to achieve full high availability application and database protection.  SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux provides application-aware protection for the broadest range of applications and environments. These include:

LifeKeeper for Linux Supported Applications and Databases
SAP SAP NetWeaver
SAP NetWeaver AS for ABAP
SAP MaxDB
SAP HANA
DB2 IBM DB2 Universal Database, Enterprise Server Edition (ESE) and
Workgroup Server Edition (WSE)
IBM DB2 Express Edition
Postgres & EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced Server/EDB Postgres Advanced Server
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Solution Pack
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Standard Server
FUJITSU Software Enterprise Postgres Advanced Edition
FUJITSU Software Enterprise Postgres Standard Edition
Symfoware Symfoware Server Enterprise Edition
Symfoware Server Standard Edition
Symfoware Server Lite Edition
Oracle Oracle Enterprise Edition
Oracle Standard Edition
Oracle Standard Edition One
Oracle Database Standard Edition 2
Sybase Sybase ASE
MySQL MySQL MySQL Enterprise
MariaDB MariaDB
WebSphere WebSphere MQ/IBM MQ
NFS Services NFS version of Mounted NFS file systems from an NFS server or Network Attached Storage (NAS) device
Apache Web Services Email Apache Web Server
Postfix

Protecting Windows Applications and Databases

Use SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition with Windows Server Failover Clustering to provide SANless high availability clustering and disaster protection for any application running in Windows. Use SIOS LifeKeeper for Windows for complete, application-aware failover clustering across multiple nodes.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2Microsoft SQL Server 2016

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Supported Applications and Databases
SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R1
Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Microsoft SQL Server 2017
Microsoft SQL Server 2019
PostgreSQL EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced Server/EDB Postgres Advanced Server
Oracle Database Oracle 11g
Oracle 11g Release 2
Oracle 12c
Oracle 12c Release 2
Oracle 18c
Oracle 19c

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

Oracle High Availability

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Oracle High Availability

Oracle High Availability

High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions for Oracle Applications

SIOS clustering software provides an easy way to protect business-critical applications and ERPs running on Oracle Database from downtime and disasters. SIOS ensure you meet strict application availability requirements, maintain customer satisfaction, and keep your business running.

Industry-Leading Flexibility for Oracle High Availability

SIOS LifeKeeper software enables complete configuration flexibility to protect Oracle applications and databases in combination of physical, virtual, or cloud environment.

Your Choice of Storage

Create a traditional shared storage cluster or use integrated host-based replication to synchronize local storage for a share-nothing cluster on-premises or in the cloud. Use with local SSD storage for cost-efficient high performance. You get Oracle high availability and disaster recovery protection without the cost and single point of failure risk of a SAN.

Comprehensive Oracle Protection

Unlike other Oracle clustering solutions that only monitor for server operation, SIOS LifeKeeper monitors the health of servers, network connections, storage, all Oracle processes, and any associated applications. Problems are immediately corrected via a set of policy-defined actions ensuring fast recovery without disruption to end users. In environments running Oracle RAC, SIOS LifeKeeper monitors application stack components not specifically protected by Oracle itself, such as applications, servers and network connections. SIOS provides high availability and disaster recovery protection at a fraction of the cost of Oracle RAC.

Save on Oracle Licensing Costs

SIOS LifeKeeper supports Oracle Standard Edition for high availability and disaster recovery  protection for a fraction of the cost of upgrading to Enterprise Edition.

Application-Aware Protection

The SIOS Oracle application recovery kit ensure your Oracle applications and/or Oracle Databases are moved to secondary cluster node(s) quickly and efficiently. Applications awareness enables SIOS LifeKeeper to automatically manage boot orders, service dependencies and other application-specific requirements for smooth failover.

Consistent HA Protections for Windows or Linux

SIOS has clustering products for Windows or leading Linux distributions including Red Hat, SUSE, and Oracle Linux operating systems. With SIOS LifeKeeper, Oracle users can rest assured that the entire application infrastructure is protected against both planned and unplanned downtime. SIOS makes it simple to quickly build protection modules for internally developed applications and ensures that complete application protection can be achieved simply and at low cost.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

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High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

High Availability Clustering Software for SAP and SAP HANA

SAP S/4HANA High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solutions

SAP-Certified High Availability for SAP and HANA in Physical, Virtual or Cloud Environments

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux provides intelligent HA protection for mission-critical SAP S/4HANA environments – on-premises or in the cloud – without the need for specialized skills or the risk inherent in complex, manual scripting. Application-aware availability ensures cluster failover automatically adheres to S/4HANA best practices for fast, reliable continued operation.

System cloning capabilities enable easy deployment of SIOS clusters to protect any application using consistent, predefined settings and integrated best practices.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux delivers:

  • Out-of-the-box high availability for SAP HANA – Meet SLAs for >99.99% availability without specialized expertise
  • 5X faster configuration. Wizard-driven, highly automated configuration and management removes time-consuming, error-prone manual steps.
  • No specialized knowledge of clustering or underlying application technology required
  • Validation of user input ensures error-free configuration and management settings
  • Application hooks provide deep monitoring of SAP S/4HANA services and performance
  • CLI Cloning (Import/Export configuration) enables easy configuration, and operation of new systems with predefined settings and integrated best practices.

Continuous Monitoring of the Entire SAP Environment

Unlike traditional SAP clustering software that only checks that the server is operational, SIOS software monitors the health of the entire application environment and verifies that SAP and/or HANA is running, file shares and provides superior protection:

  • Protect your entire SAP stack with high availability clustering, continuous data replication, and disaster recovery functionality
  • Supports both JAVA and ABAP versions of SAP servers running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and other Linux OS environments and accommodates a wide range of storage architectures.
  • Compatible with your local SSD storage for high performance for a fraction of the cost of traditional clusters
  • Efficient replication engine minimizes network traffic–without hardware accelerators or compression devices
  • Saves labor cost by automating data replication tasks using an intuitive management console
  • AS Application Server or NFS exports are available, databases are mounted and available, and clients are able to connect

Monitoring the Entire SAP Environment

SIOS software actively monitors: servers, operating systems, SAP Primary Application Server (PAS) Instance, ABAP SAP Central Service (ASCS) instance, back-end databases (Oracle, DB2, MaxDB, MySQL  and PostgresSQL), the SAP Central Services Instance (SCS), volumes or file systems, file shares or NFS mounts, IP and virtual IP, Enqueue and message servers, and Logical Volumes (LVM).

SIOS LifeKeeper software to build a traditional SAN-based cluster or a SANless cluster by synchronizing local storage on the active SAP Server node (or cloud instance) with. local storage on a standby node using real-time, block-level replication. Replication can operate in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. SANless clusters can be used to support high availability operations in cloud environments.

Automatic Failover

In the event of a failure on the active cluster node, SIOS software moves SAP and/or S/4HANA operation to the standby node. SIOS software lets you configure standby servers that are either local or remote over a LAN or WAN. Real-time storage replication ensures immediate recovery from a local system failure and allows you to create multiple real-time copies through one-to-many replication.

SIOS LifeKeeper can also stop and restart the application both locally and on another cluster server at either the same site or at another geographic location. When the SIOS software detects a problem, it automatically initiates one of three configurable recovery actions that will maximize uptime and protection for applications and data: it may attempt a restart on the same server; switchover to a standby server; or alert a system administrator. It performs both local recovery or complete failover quickly and easily.

The Industry’s Most Comprehensive Disaster Protection for SAP HANA

SIOS software makes disaster recovery testing easy by allowing administrators to move SAP and/or HANA to the DR site for testing and to move it back to the primary site when testing is done. It also lets you leave SAP in service in the primary site while completing DR testing with no impact to your production network by unlocking the target data, bringing it into service on the backup system to verify recovery.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux with HANA Multitarget feature provides automated high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) protection for HANA databases. It allows you to extend a traditional two-node failover cluster to include additional nodes in DR location(s) without the need for complex scripting or cumbersome administration tasks. Learn more here

Consistent HA Protection for Windows and Linux

SIOS gives you the flexibility to run SAP on a combination of Windows and Linux environments while maintaining consistent high availability protection. For example, SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux to protect SAP application and pair it with SIOS DataKeeper software to protect SAP services in a Windows environment.

Low Total Cost of Ownership

SIOS engaged an independent organization with many years of experience in deploying, supporting, and designing high availability (HA) solutions for SAP S4/HANA to compare SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux with SUSE HAE in a side-by-side test. Testing revealed that SIOS clusters could be implemented five times faster (less than 2 hours for SIOS vs 12 Hours for HAE). Annual maintenance was also faster for SIOS,

SIOS Delivers Significant Savings

Example: A small sized SAP implementation with three production systems with equivalent test environments that are clustered for a total of six clusters could save 18 business days with SIOS. Here’s how:

SIOS saves two days per cluster of implementation time and one day per cluster per year on testing/maintenance and significantly reduce implementation risk. 

6 clusters X 2 days implementation 12 days
+ 6 clusters X 1 day per year testing/maintenance 6 days (annually)
Save 18 Days of IT Time

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

SQL Server High Availability

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SQL Server High Availability

SQL Server High Availability

SANless High Availability On-Premises and in the Cloud

SIOS software enables high availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server operating in any combination of physical, virtual, cloud, or hybrid cloud without the cost and complexity of a SAN or other shared storage.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition for SQL Server High Availability

Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) is commonly used to provide high availability for SQL Server. It implements full coordination of redundant computing resources and automatically manages the recovery of SQL Server operations and data on a standby node in the event of server or application failure. But WSFC requires expensive SAN hardware or complex shared storage in the cloud.

Simply add SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to WSFC to easily create a SANless cluster for SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery in the cloud, in virtualized environments such as VMware or Hyper-V, or on physical servers.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is a fully certified Microsoft Azure high availability solution.

Learn more about SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition

SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Cloud and Hybrid Cloud

SIOS DataKeeper lets you run your business-critical applications in a flexible, scalable cloud environment, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform without sacrificing performance, high availability or disaster protection. SIOS DataKeeper is available in the AWS Marketplace and Azure-certified high availability software for WSFC is offered in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

Scale Out File Server (SOFS) and Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), two technologies offered in Microsoft Windows for sharing disks, can’t be used in a cluster for sharing disks across cloud regions and availability zones, putting SQL Server at risk of downtime.

In contrast, SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition provides high availability cluster failover across cloud regions and availability zones – giving you significantly greater protection from a broad class of failures.

SQL Server Always On Availability Groups SIOS DataKeeper with SQL Server Always On Failover Clusters
Requires costly SQL Server Enterprise Edition Save up to 70% on software licensing costs and provides enterprise-class clustering features by using SQL Server Standard Edition with SIOS DataKeeper.
Cloud limited IP addresses. SIOS supports unlimited databases. No need to keep track or worry about failures.
Supports only 2 nodes in SQL 2014 &­ earlier. Supports only 3 nodes in SQL 2016 & earlier. DataKeeper replicates all changes automatically keeping all nodes up to date.
Added complexity – all changes and updates to the system databases have to be made on all nodes manually DataKeeper gives you the flexibility to create a multinode cluster without a limit to the number of failover nodes.
Microsoft has only tested 100 databases and 10 Availability Groups – “results may vary depending on hardware” One load balancer per AG in Azure are all addressed by 1 IP address.

Learn more about SIOS DataKeeper in the cloud

Compare SQL Server Cluster Options for High Availability

For SQL Server clustering, a common choice of availability is Microsoft Always On Availability Groups and Always On Failover Clusters. SIOS DataKeeper provides a number of key benefits to achieve higher availability and more comprehensive data protection.

Learn why AWS Prescriptive Guidance Includes SIOS DataKeeper with Always On Failover Clusters

SIOS LifeKeeper for SQL Server High Availability in Windows or Linux

SIOS Protection Suite for Windows provides integrated data replication, high availability clustering and disaster recovery solutions to provide high availability protection for the most demanding enterprise SQL Server deployments.

SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux provides enterprise-class, application-aware HA/DR protection for SQL Server in all major distributions of Linux, including Red Hat, SUSE, and Oracle Linux.

Learn more about SIOS Protection Suite for Linux

Reproduced with permission from SIOS

HA for Virtual Server Environments

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HA for Virtual Server Environments

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

hyper v host clusters failover & replication

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.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS