{"id":4429,"date":"2021-06-29T12:16:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T16:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/backup-disaster-recovery\/?p=4429"},"modified":"2021-06-29T12:23:43","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T16:23:43","slug":"minimizing-downtime-in-the-modern-data-protection-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/backup-disaster-recovery\/minimizing-downtime-in-the-modern-data-protection-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Minimizing Downtime in the Modern Data Protection Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MinimizingThis is part of Solutions Review\u2019s Premium Content Series, a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories. In this submission, Dave Bermingham of SIOS Technology<\/a> outlines how IT professionals can minimize downtime in the modern data protection era.<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"PremiumIn today\u2019s data-driven economy, IT is under pressure from end-users to deliver near-continuous access to their organization\u2019s data and applications. While there are more options than ever before for providing high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) protection for data and applications, there is still a great deal of confusion about what is needed. Let\u2019s look\u00a0at\u00a0how HA\/DR has evolved over the years and clarify what is necessary\u00a0to protect today\u2019s business-critical applications and data in on-prem, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Evolution of HA\/DR<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

In IT terms, application and data protection has always been based on eliminating single points of failure (SPoF) through redundancy. That is, ensuring that there\u00a0is\u00a0more than one\u00a0of every vital hardware, software, and networking component required to run an application and access data. If one component fails, the secondary component is ready to take over, minimizing downtime and data loss.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For many years, IT has protected the most business-critical applications using failover cluster configurations. In these\u00a0<\/span>configurations<\/span><\/span>, two or more server nodes \u2013 designated as the primary node and the secondary node(s) – are connected to shared storage (typically a SAN). Clustering software monitors the health of the application and,\u00a0if an issue arises, moves\u00a0the\u00a0operation over to another node in the cluster.\u00a0<\/span>Since both the primary and secondary nodes were connected to the same shared storage, application operations\u00a0can continue with identical data.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While this configuration is still used today, it poses several challenges that have led to newer HA clustering options. The first challenge is that shared storage poses a\u00a0SPoF\u00a0risk. If the SAN or other shared storage fails or is\u00a0<\/span>damaged or rendered<\/span><\/span>\u00a0inaccessible, all cluster nodes are inoperable. Second, SAN storage can be very expensive and require specialized skills to maintain and manage.\u00a0<\/span>Third, in Linux environments creating a failover cluster can be very complex and manual, requiring custom scripting to ensure the application failover is orchestrated according to best practices.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of these limitations,\u00a0many companies kept their most critical applications and databases in their on-premises data centers where they could be protected with traditional high availability clustering instead of moving to the cloud.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

High Availability and Disaster Recovery in Modern Data Protection Infrastructure<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Today, innovations have been introduced that enable IT to create a failover clustering environment that provides both HA and DR in on-prem, cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. Instead of shared storage, each cluster node is connected to its own local storage. Efficient, host-based, block-level replication\u00a0ensures\u00a0the storage on\u00a0the primary node stays identical to the storage on every other node in the cluster. The replication software integrates with standard clustering software in both Windows and Linux environments.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cluster nodes can be located in geographically separated locations for DR,\u00a0and replication software can use synchronous or asynchronous replication depending on the latency requirements required by the database or application.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This\u00a0<\/span>SANless<\/span><\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/span>shared-nothing<\/span><\/i> clustering configuration not only eliminates the\u00a0SPoF\u00a0risk of shared storage, but also allows companies to migrate mission-critical applications, such as SQL Server, SAP, HANA, Oracle, and others to the cloud without giving up the high availability and DR protection they had on-premises.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another innovation is in the area of application-aware clustering software. This software includes application-specific recovery kits that monitor the entire application stack. This clustering software ensures that complex applications and databases, such as SAP HANA and required services failover according to best practices for optimal performance and failover reliability.\u00a0<\/span>Advanced solutions<\/span><\/span>\u00a0will automate many configuration steps and actually validate your inputs to prevent misconfigurations that could put applications and data at risk during and after the failover process. These options often offer greater configuration flexibility and failover reliability than clustering solutions from OS vendors.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Role of Cloud in Modern Data Protection<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

With advances in public cloud technology, confusion persists about the role of\u00a0the\u00a0cloud in HA\/DR and whether HA\/DR clustering is needed in the cloud. Note that while public cloud vendors offer service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee their VMs will be accessible, those SLAs only cover hardware and networking.\u00a0<\/span>There are many conditions, such as software compatibility, resource contention, and others where VMs are fully operational, but applications and data are \u201cdown.\u201d\u00a0For this reason, IT teams need to implement high availability protection for data and applications, even in public cloud environments.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The good news is that advanced application-aware clustering and replication software gives companies the flexibility to use the cloud in\u00a0various\u00a0new ways\u00a0for HA\/DR. For example, you may create a cluster with nodes in different cloud availability zones for added protection from local disasters. Or create a two-node cluster in the cloud and replicate data to a third node in a different cloud region for region-wide DR without the cost of a physical DR site.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s IT infrastructures that combine on-prem, cloud, hybrid,\u00a0and multi-cloud environments, it is\u00a0crucial\u00a0to choose high availability and disaster recovery solutions\u00a0that enable configuration\u00a0flexibility and application-aware\u00a0intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Download<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is part of Solutions Review\u2019s Premium Content Series, a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories. In this submission, Dave Bermingham of SIOS Technology outlines how IT professionals can minimize downtime in the modern data protection era. In today\u2019s data-driven economy, IT is under pressure from end-users to deliver […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":4430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,204],"tags":[30,72,486,1125,1124,1111],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMinimizing Downtime in the Modern Data Protection Era<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For Solutions Review's Premium Content Series, Dave Bermingham of SIOS Technology outlines how to minimize downtime in the modern data protection era.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/backup-disaster-recovery\/minimizing-downtime-in-the-modern-data-protection-era\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" 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