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Press Release: Spirent Provides High Availability for Applications in Cloud with SIOS SANLess Clusters

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SIOS software delivers high availability for Siebel Gateway Server and file server applications

SAN MATEO, CA – March 10, 2015 – SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com), maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced that Spirent is using SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to protect its business critical applications in the Amazon EC2 cloud. Because the SIOS software is integrated with Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC), it did not add complexity and was easy for Spirent IT staff to deploy.

Spirent is a global leader in communications test and measurement with 20 locations in 15 countries worldwide. The company develops innovative hardware and software solutions and test methodologies for the communications industry. The Spirent IT department is continuously looking for ways to improve efficiency and maintain the highest quality of service to customers. They recognized that moving their operations to the Amazon cloud would provide a variety of 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 Communications. “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 high availability 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 efficient, 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 of SIOS Technology.  “We are very impressed with Spirent’s innovative use case with two node clusters in the cloud.”

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.

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SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, 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.

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Contact:

Beth Winkowski
Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS
Phone: 978-649-7189
Email: bethwinkowski@US.SIOS.com

Continuity Central: Strategies For Protecting SQL Server In The Cloud

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SQL Server is a business critical application that requires high availability protection, regardless of where it is deployed. Even in the cloud, you still need to protect SQL Server from downtime if the cloud instance or the cloud provider fails. However, traditional solutions, such as shared-storage clusters may not be practical or even possible in the cloud. SANless software can provide enterprises with high availability and disaster recovery protection for SQL Server in the cloud without the limitations of shared storage. This article will look at strategies for how this can be achieved.

Most cloud providers allow you to deploy your applications across multiple separate and redundant data centers. However, they do not offer shared storage (i.e., a SAN), which is required to support traditional Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) across these computing resources. The solution is to use SANless software instead of a shared storage to create a high availability cluster using WSFC with local storage. You can deploy a highly available SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) across multiple windows instances in the cloud. When a failure occurs, WSFC will coordinate the SQL Server failover and restart SQL on another node in the cluster. SANless software as an ingredient in your WSFC environment in a cloud deployment eliminates the need for shared storage. Instead of a SAN, the software keeps storage in all nodes synchronized (identical) using real time, block level replication. Replication can be performed in either synchronous or asynchronous modes. Cluster nodes can also be located in separate cloud regions for added protection. The local, replicated storage is presented to WSFC as if it was shared storage. Using SANless clusters is a fast, easy way to deploy SQL Server in a highly available configuration in the cloud while continuing to use Windows Server Failover Clustering.

To provide high availability and disaster protection for SQL Server in the cloud, you may also want to configure a failover cluster with nodes in different geographically separate areas (e.g., AWS or Microsoft Azure Regions). One way to achieve this is using the AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature that is built into SQL server itself. However, Availability Groups requires SQL Server Enterprise Edition, which can be very cost prohibitive for simple two node deployments in this configuration. Unfortunately, Availability Groups also has a number of limitations you should be aware of: it isn’t compatible with distributed transactions, so if your application relies on the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) you cannot use AlwaysOn Availability Groups because the instance ID of the server changes upon failover and the distributed transaction coordinator is not aware of the new instance ID. Additionally, Availability Groups only replicates user defined databases and NOT system databases (like Master and MSDB). SQL Agent jobs and SQL logons are not automatically synchronized and will not fail over as part of the Availability Group. Finally, Availability Groups introduces additional administrative overhead you might not want to deal with. Availability Groups are configured and managed at the database level, not at the SQL Server instance level. Therefore, administrators must reconfigure protection every time a database is added or dropped. Essentially, you are managing two separate instances of SQL and have to take great care that you keep their configurations in sync.

In these cases, SANless software can be used to deploy a SQL Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) to provide high availability failover for the entire SQL instance, even across different subnets, using cost-efficient SQL Server Standard Edition. You can build a cluster using SANless software to enhance WSFC enabling failover of SQL Server Standard Edition across cloud availability zones or regions. This can be the best choice for companies that want full high availability and disaster recovery protection of the entire SQL instance; gaining the affordability of SQL Server Standard Edition, maximum application compatibility, and reduced administrative overhead.

Summary

For many years, WSFC has been used to provide high availability and disaster recovery protection for SQL applications in traditional on-site environments. Until recently, managing site failures has been very complex and expensive, requiring large investments in specialized hardware and software as well as the availability of a second data center site. The cloud offers an attractive and cost-effective second site in which to locate a cluster member and to handle a failover when the local site fails. However, because traditional clusters require shared storage between all cluster nodes across local and cloud resources, this has not been a practical architecture for traditional clusters. In these cases, SANless software can be used to create clusters that provide high availability across local and cloud resources and extend an on-premises SAN-based or SANless cluster for SQL Server to the cloud for disaster recovery protection without the cost of a remote recovery site or SQL Server Enterprise Edition licenses. SANless software can be an easy, cost-efficient high availability and disaster recovery solution for companies that are continuing to manage their SQL environments on physical, private cloud, or on-premises VM environment.

The author:
Tony Tomarchio is director of Field Engineering at SIOS Technology Corp. Tony is responsible for defining and delivering technical pre-sales services, support and best practices to SIOS customers, prospects and partners. Tony has more than a decade of experience providing systems management and high availability solutions to enterprise customers.

Read the Article at ContinuityCentral.com

March 19, 2015: Live Webinar: High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Low Cost Storage in Virtual and Cloud Environments

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In this session presented by Microsoft MVP, MCM and MCSM Denny Cherry will discuss some of the high availability options which are available to you when it comes to Microsoft SQL Server in virtual server and cloud environments. We will also review some of the problems (both technological and financial) with these options, and how we can overcome these various problems.

This webinar is interactive so come ready to ask your questions, add your comments, and join the discussion.

Register Now

Date: March 19, 2014
Time: 10:00a PST / 1:00p EST

About Denny Cherry

Denny Cherry is the owner and principal consultant for Denny Cherry & Associates Consulting and has over a decade of experience working with platforms such as Microsoft SQL Server, Hyper-V, vSphere and Enterprise Storage solutions. Denny’s areas of technical expertise include system architecture, performance tuning, security, replication and troubleshooting.

Denny currently holds several of the Microsoft Certifications related to SQL Server for versions 2000 through 2012 including the Microsoft Certified Master as well as being a Microsoft MVP for several years. Denny has written several books and dozens of technical articles on SQL Server management and how SQL Server integrates with various other technologies.

March 25, 2015: Live Webinar – Clustering 101: Windows 10 Technical Preview – What You Need To Know About Windows Server 10 Failover Clustering

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In this month’s Clustering 101 session, Microsoft Cluster MVP, Dave Bermingham will give a preview the new Windows 10 features, including the introduction of Cloud Witness, Rolling upgrades, Storage Replica, VM Compute Resiliency, Improved Diagnostics and more. Join Dave Bermingham for the must see clustering features of Windows 10.

You can participate before the event by tweeting your questions to @SIOSTech using #Clustering101 and of course bring your own questions and comments.

Register Now

Windows 10 Technical Preview – What You Need To Know About Windows Server 10 Failover Clustering
Date: March 25, 2014
Time: 10:00a PST — 1:00pm EST

About Clustering 101 Series

Clustering 101 is a webinar series hosted by Microsoft MVP, Dave Bermingham focused on addressing the numerous facets of clustering for high availability, data replication and any combination there of. This series will air monthly, the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10:00a PST / 1:00p EST.

About Dave Bermingham

David Bermingham is recognized within the technology community as a high availability expert and has been honored by his peers by being elected to be a Microsoft MVP in clustering since 2010. David’s work as director, technical evangelist at SIOS Technology Corp., has him focused on Microsoft high availability and disaster recovery solutions as well as providing hands on support, training and professional services for cluster implementations. David holds numerous technical certifications and draws from more than twenty years of experience in IT, including work in the finance, healthcare and education fields, to help organizations design solutions to meet their high availability and disaster recovery needs. Learn more at www.us.sios.com

StorageNewsletter: Cayan Protects Business Critical Applications With SIOS SANLess Clusters

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SIOS Technology Corp. announced that Cayan, LLC, in payment solutions industry, is using SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software to protect its important Windows applications.

The company’s Genius customer engagement platform aggregates and integrates every conceivable transaction technology, payment type and customer program – both present and future – into a single platform. Customers include large online retailers.

“Our top priority is ensuring that our customers can complete transactions continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Paul Vienneau, CTO, Cayan.

When the company decided to move to a larger data center, they looked for a way to provide HA and disaster protection for the SQL Server database that their Genius platform and other important applications run on. The company considered using a traditional shared storage cluster, but did not want the cost and complexity of purchasing and managing a SAN storage array. As shared storage, a SAN would also introduce the risk of a single point of failure.

“We needed a solution that could handle the large volume of transactions we process without slowing application performance,” said Vienneau.

Cayan IT staff decided to use SANLess clusters. They built two-node clusters using standard Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and adding SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition software as an ingredient.

“The SIOS software has very intuitive configuration wizards that enabled us to deploy our platform and applications in the SANLess clusters quickly and easily,” said Vienneau. “Since SIOS DataKeeper is completely integrated with WSFC, our IT staff did not have to change system administration or add complexity.”

Because the SANLess clusters use local storage, there is minimal performance overhead and fast application response times.

“We were able to run our applications in the new SANLess cluster environment in our new data center in a full production mode before we put it into full production. We set up a performance lab and tested the replication latency under heavy load. It ran great. The SIOS software met or exceeded our expectations. Implementation and ongoing administration is easy and we have had zero downtime since we implemented our SIOS SANLess clusters,” said Vienneau.

“Results achieved by Cayan are common across SIOS’ customer base,” said Jerry Melnick, COO, SIOS Technology. “SIOS DataKeeper adds replication for disaster protection in SAN-based Windows clusters and enables SANLess clusters in Windows Server Failover Clustering environments where shared storage clusters are impossible or impractical.”

Read the full article at StorageNewsletter.com