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Trend Toward Centralized High Availability and Disaster Recovery

By Margaret Hoagland, VP, Global Sales & Marketing, SIOS Technology

I predict a growing trend toward consolidation and centralization in the way organizations implement and manage their application high availability environments.

Once reserved for mission-critical systems, such as SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and HANA, application and database high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) will become a requirement for more systems, applications, and services throughout the enterprise. As a result, IT teams will look for more efficient ways to consolidate and centralize implementation and ongoing management of their HA/DR operations.

Whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud environment, critical applications require protection from downtime and disasters. To ensure high availability, IT teams eliminate single points of failure throughout the IT infrastructure to achieve application uptime of at least 99.99% annually. Application disaster recovery is the ability to restore operations quickly in the event of an incident that takes an IT system or entire site offline.

HA/DR for More Applications and Databases

As computing becomes more decentralized, we will see a growing trend toward the use of HA/DR for applications such as video surveillance management systems (VMS), access control and building management systems as well as EHR/EMR health and medical records systems as well as cybersecurity platforms.

Consistent HA/DR User Experience

Many organizations today use HA/DR clustering software from different vendors with very different user interfaces depending on the operating system their applications and databases are running in. For example, they may use Windows Server Failover clusters (WSFC) in a Windows environment, SUSE HAE in a SUSE Linux environment, and Pacemaker in a Red Hat environment.

As companies look to protect more applications and databases with HA/DR, they will look to drive down the inefficiencies and costs inherent in having to work with the different interfaces and processes required by these clustering solutions.

Instead, companies will look to implement HA/DR - typically delivered with HA clustering - using a consistent interface across both Windows and Linux environments.

Deep HA/DR Expertise

Since applications and databases rely on the operation of every part of the IT stack, to troubleshoot downtime, companies often have to assemble a team of IT specialists from networking, storage, database, and application groups. An added benefit of non-OS-based HA/DR solutions is that they are offered by companies with in-depth expertise in the complexity of providing high availability and disaster recovery for a wide range of applications and use cases. They can help companies understand how to configure and manage systems in a way that best meets their overall objective and business requirements.

Efficient, Automated Disaster Recovery for Complex Databases

OS-based HA clustering for stateful Linux-based workloads such as SAP HANA has several weaknesses that companies will look to overcome in the coming year. For example, even in a standard two-node HA cluster, OS-based clustering solutions require complicated scripting to handle failover dependencies, state management, and replication. Adding third or fourth nodes in different data centers or cloud availability zones for DR purposes can increase the complexity of both failover and replication exponentially. In addition, during a system failure, admins typically go into crisis mode and drop all their current tasks to bring systems back online. After the outage, busy admins must dedicate more time to performing a root cause analysis of the failure. These stressors lead to errors from admins because failover processes often depend on sequential, manual steps with complex decision trees. There will be a growing need for clustering software designed to simplify the complexity of HA/DR in the SAP HANA environment through automation of both the failover and HANA System replication management processes.

Businesses have increased demand for system uptime, while IT organizations are seeing their budgets and headcounts cut. These trends can challenge the best system administrators for essential business systems like SAP HANA. SIOS LifeKeeper simplifies the deployment and operation of highly available Linux clusters for SAP HANA and allows you to support failures without data loss, monitor your environment, and build protections against regional and data center failure, either in your cloud or your data center.

In conclusion, the landscape of HA/DR is evolving, and SIOS Technology anticipates a significant shift towards consolidation and centralization in the implementation and management of these crucial environments. As the demand for HA/DR grows, in-depth expertise in IT teams becomes crucial in dealing with the complexity of troubleshooting downtime across the entire IT stack. The need for clustering software designed to simplify HA/DR complexity through automation will continue to grow, particularly in the SAP HANA environment.

The evolving landscape of HA/DR necessitates a holistic approach, encompassing efficient consolidation, consistent user experiences, deep expertise, and innovative solutions to meet the increasing demands of diverse and critical applications in modern enterprise environments.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Hoagland, VP, Global Sales & Marketing, SIOS Technology

Margaret Hoagland, VP of Global Sales and Marketing, is responsible for leading SIOS Technology Corp.'s  sales strategy and manages the execution of the full range of corporate, product, and marketing communications programs, that support the adoption and utilization of SIOS solutions. Margaret brings to her role more than 30 years of marketing experience including 15 years of experience in the high availability space - making her uniquely equipped to successfully develop and implement highly effective marketing solutions that differentiate and demonstrate the inherent value of SIOS products. She has a strong track record of partnering with cross-functional teams to build unity and alignment across the organization.

Margaret earned a Master's of Science in Communications Management from Simmons College and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College.