News | SIOS SANless clusters

SYS-CON Media – Cloud Expo: SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition Software Now Microsoft Azure Certified

April 2, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland

SIOS Technology Corp. has announced that its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure certified and now available in the Azure Marketplace. The new SIOS offering is the only Azure certified software that enables customers to create a SANLess high availability cluster in Azure using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering.

By adding SIOS DataKeeper software to Windows Server Failover Clustering, customers can quickly and easily help protect business-critical Windows environments from downtime and data loss in a cloud or a combination of physical, virtual, or hybrid cloud environment. Now, for the first time, applications depending on SAN-based Windows server failover clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve the more comprehensive high availability protection they need.

“We are pleased that Microsoft has chosen to certify and include SIOS DataKeeper in the Azure Marketplace. By providing fast, convenient access to SIOS DataKeeper software, our Azure Marketplace offering enables customers to deploy their important applications such as SQL, SAP, and Oracle in Azure with the same high availability protection they have in traditional physical server environments,” said Jerry Melnick, COO of SIOS Technology.

“Products like SIOS DataKeeper are pivotal in the cloud transformation,” said Vibhor Kapoor, Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft Azure. “By providing the essential high availability protection for critical applications that enterprises need, SIOS and Azure are enabling customers to take their journey to the cloud with confidence.”

Along with its Azure Marketplace offering, SIOS provides an informative, step-by-step guide to creating a high availability failover cluster to protect SQL Server in Azure IaaS written by Microsoft MVP, David Bermingham. The SIOS DataKeeper offering in the Azure Marketplace is here.

Read the article at SYS-CON.com

WHIR | Hosting and Cloud: New Software on the Azure Marketplace Allows SAN-free Cloud Clustering

April 2, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland

SANLess clustering software developer SIOS Technology has put its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software on the Azure Marketplace, providing enterprises an easy way to create a SANLess high availability cluster in Azure using Windows Server Failover Clustering.

The Azure Marketplace provides convenient access to SIOS DataKeeper, which enterprises can use to easily deploy applications such as SQL, SAP, and Oracle databases in Azure while maintaining high availability and protection.

SIOS was behind the first Linux clustering solution in the 90s. The company has since created a full Linux clustering offering called SIOS Protection Suite, and a product called SIOS Datakeeper for Windows which is essentially an add-on to Windows Server Failover Clustering. Applications depending on SAN-based Windows Server Failover Clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve more comprehensive high availability.

According to Jerry Melnick, COO of SIOS Technology, SIOS software “eliminates the SAN in the cluster, and allow clusters to run in any variety of combinations.” Not having to rely on SAN technology, customers can use a variety of storage types such as high-speed direct attached storage in a physical environment, or cloud-based storage from providers like Azure and Amazon Web Services, and it all appears to applications as local storage. “We’re clusters anywhere and anyway,” he said.

Instead of having to buy and deploy expensive and complicated SAN equipment, SIOS provides an easy way for customers to create cloud storage clusters without leaving their desk. To deploy a SANless cluster, SIOS provides a step-by-step guide by Microsoft MVP David Bermingham.

Melnick said the solution is unique in the market that addresses a pain point for many enterprises running mission-critical applications that rely on transactional databases.

“We’re the only solution certified by Microsoft Windows for Azure to provide support for Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering to run in Azure,” he said. “And what that means is that customers who are accustomed to the high availability capabilities of Windows Server and have their critical applications running on those very popular failover clustering environments can now move those applications directly into Azure as-is. There’s really no change to the application needed – nothing but adding our software.”

SIOS customers can save a great deal of money by deploying clusters on externally hosted services which are often less expensive than local SANs. They can also ensure that data is secure by using VPN connections, and adding their own end-to-end encryption.

Melnick also mentioned that while most use cases up until this point have been enterprises, cloud and hosted service providers have been increasingly interested in SIOS’s SANless clustering capabilities.

“We’ve had probably more inquiries from service providers in the past six months than any time prior. Helping people move important workloads in the cloud is highly differentiating – and service providers are figuring that out. And service providers have their own value that they bring to the cloud ecosystem so we’re working with numbers of them now to put some solutions together.”

Read this article on WHIR

DABCC: SIOS DataKeeper SANLess Clustering Software is Now Microsoft Azure Certified and Available in the Azure Marketplace

April 2, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland

SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com), maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced that its SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software is Microsoft Azure certified and now available in the Azure Marketplace. The new SIOS offering is the only Azure certified software that enables customers to create a SANLess high availability cluster in Azure using Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering.

By adding SIOS DataKeeper software to Windows Server Failover Clustering customers can quickly and easily help protect business-critical Windows environments from downtime and data loss in a cloud or a combination of physical, virtual, or hybrid cloud environment. Now, for the first time, applications depending on SAN-based Windows server failover clusters for protection can be moved to Azure and achieve the more comprehensive high availability protection they need.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/sios-datakeeper/sios-datakeeper-8-bring-your-own-license/

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes SAN and #SANLess software solutions that make clusters easy to use and easy to own. An essential part of any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and #SANLess software 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. The unique SIOS #SANLess clustering solution allows you to configure clusters with local storage, eliminating both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared (SAN) storage.

Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

View this article on DABCC.com

Data Center Post: Epicure Selections Achieves High Availability and Disaster Recovery Protection for Critical SQL Server Applications with SIOS Sanless Clustering Software

March 18, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland

Epicure Selections is using SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software to easily and cost-efficiently provide HA and DR protection for its business-critical SQL Server applications without the complexity of building out a remote DR site or purchasing costly SQL Server Enterprise Edition licenses. SANLess Clustering

Epicure, Canada’s leading direct sales company, sells healthy, easy-to-prepare food products through a network of over 16,000 consultants.

Epicure relies on two websites for its critical business operations. Its public website provides product, company, and consultant enrolment information to customers and people interested in becoming a consultant. The internal website provides consultants with important product information and enables them to place orders.

The company uses two instances of SQL Server Standard Edition—one for each website running on a single server. “Our websites are vital to our business,” said Russell Born, Senior Network Infrastructure Administrator at Epicure.

As the company grew and expanded its products and services, the Epicure IT department needed to update and protect its business-critical websites from downtime. It decided to move both websites from a third-party hosted facility to its on-premises data center and Amazon Web Services. “The business is growing and we needed to ensure our website delivers an excellent user experience for our customers and consultants,” said Born.

As part of this update, Epicure wanted an efficient, cost-effective way to provide high availability and disaster protection for both websites while continuing to run them on two instances of SQL Server Standard Edition. “We didn’t want the added expense of moving to SQL Server Enterprise Edition if we could provide HA and DR with Standard Edition,” Born said.

Using SIOS SANLess clustering software, Epicure IT staff created a two-node cluster in an active-passive failover configuration that enables each SQL instance to failover independently. One cluster node is in the on-premises data center and the second node is in an instance of the AWS EC2 cloud. Epicure IT staff created the SIOS SANLess clusters and configured them using the software’s intuitive graphical user interface.

The SIOS software provides Epicure with an easy, cost-efficient way to provide HA and DR protection for its business-critical SQL Server applications without the complexity of building out a remote DR site or purchasing costly SQL Server Enterprise Edition licenses. “The SIOS software has allowed us to create a hybrid solution providing additional cost savings of running on-premises with the reliability and flexibility of running in the cloud,” said Born. “Knowing that a website outage will result in an automatic failover allows our IT Team to focus their attention on other priorities to strengthen our business.”

About the Author:

Jerry Melnick
COO, SIOS Technology Corp.

Jerry Melnick (jmelnick@us.sios.com) is responsible for defining corporate strategy and operations at SIOS Technology Corp., maker of SIOS SAN and #SANLess cluster software. He more than 25 years of experience in the enterprise and high availability software industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Beloit College with graduate work in Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Boston University.

Read this article at Data Center Post

Storage Newsletter: Spirent Communications Provides HA in Cloud With SIOS

March 17, 2015 by Margaret Hoagland

SIOS Technology Corp., maker of SAN and SANLess clustering software products, announced that Spirent Communications plc is using its DataKeeper Cluster Edition to protect its business critical applications in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

Because the SIOS software is integrated with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC), it did not add complexity and was easy for Spirent IT staff to deploy.

Spirent is a specialist in communications test and measurement with 20 locations in 15 countries worldwide. The company develops hardware and software solutions and test methodologies for the communications industry.The Spirent IT department is looking for ways to improve efficiency and maintain high QoS to customers. They recognized that moving their operations to the Amazon cloud would provide benefits.

“We saw an opportunity to gain significant flexibility, scalability, and efficiency by moving to the Amazon EC2 cloud,” said Sohamn Chatterjee, senior business systems architect, Spirent. “This move lets us grow quickly and apply additional IT resources as our needs change.”

For the move to the cloud to be successful, Spirent IT staff needed to provide HA for its Siebel Gateway Server and File Server application environments.

“We could not move important applications to the cloud until we were sure that we would not be putting them at risk for downtime or data loss,” said Chatterjee. “The traditional shared storage clusters that we would have used in a physical environment require shared storage, which is not available in EC2.”

Spirent chose SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to protect its business critical applications. They built two-node clusters in the cloud using standard WSFC and adding SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software as an ingredient. The SIOS software uses real-time replication to synchronize storage between instances in different availability zones, making them appear to WSFC as a SAN.

“We were able to configure the clusters just as we would in a WSFC environment so we did not need specialized skills or a SAN administrator,” said Chatterjee. “The SIOS software enabled us to implement our move to the cloud efficiently.”

The SIOS software provided the protection Spirent needed to move its important applications to the cloud. Since their cluster deployment, they have not experienced any downtime or data loss in their Siebel or File Server environments. They have also found the SIOS SANLess clusters make failover/failback testing fast and easy.

“We are very pleased with the SIOS software and the protection our SIOS SANLess clusters provide for both our Siebel Gateway Server and File Server application environments in the Amazon EC2 cloud,” said Chatterjee.

“An essential ingredient in any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and SANLess clustering software provides the flexibility to build clusters to protect any choice of Windows or Linux environment and any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) storage, without sacrificing performance or availability,” said Jerry Melnick, COO, SIOS. “We are very impressed with Spirent’s innovative use case with two node clusters in the cloud.”