SIOS, an industry leader in application high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR), recently announced SIOS LifeKeeper version 9.7. To find out more about this release, VMblog spoke with Margaret Hoagland, VP, Global Sales & Marketing at SIOS Technology.
VMblog: Can you quickly tell our readers what is SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux?
Margaret Hoagland: SIOS LifeKeeper for Linux is high availability clustering software used to protect critical applications and databases such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server from downtime and disasters. It monitors the healthy operation of the application environment and in the event of a failure, moves operation over to a secondary server where operation can continue.
It comes with application-specific plugins that automate manual scripting and ensure configuration and failover processes adhere to the best practices of specific applications and databases.
VMblog: Why is application-specific intelligence important for a clustering software?
Hoagland: Every application and database has its own requirements for start up and operation. For example, a complex SAP ERP has numerous interdependent resources requiring a specific order of operations for startup and operation to continue after a failover. Because SIOS LifeKeeper is application-aware, it is able to ensure these requirements are met and that the failover process happens quickly, reliably, and in accordance with best practices.
VMblog: Which Linux distributions does it support?
Hoagland: It supports major Linux distributions: SUSE, Red Hat, Oracle, and Rocky. This is an important benefit for customers who may have several applications running on different Linux distributions. SIOS HA clustering gives them a consistent user experience across all of them. Our complete list of support operating systems is available at https://docs.us.sios.com/spslinux/9.6.2/en/topic/sios-protection-for-linux-support-matrix
VMblog: What is new in LifeKeeper for Linux v 9.7.0?
Hoagland: We have added a particularly exciting new feature called HANA Multitarget Replication. This feature provides the most comprehensive DR protection in the industry. It enables customers to run their HANA database on a primary node and use HANA system replication (HSR) to replicate it to up to three secondary nodes. Setting up a DR node or nodes with any other clustering software requires extensive manual scripting and some extensive experience with HANA to ensure the failover would happen reliably and in keeping with SAP best practices. What’s worse, in the event of a failover, more manual scripting is required to elevate a secondary node primary node status and to continue to replicate to the DR node. Restoring the configuration to your normal settings after the source of issue is resolved also requires extensive manual scripting. Manual scripting is not only time consuming, it is a significant opportunity for human error.
VMblog: How does it help teams with improving their HA & DR?
Hoagland: It allow you to extend a traditional two-node cluster to add a third or even fourth node. You can, for example, locate a secondary node in a different AWS availability zone and region for both high availability and disaster recovery protection. Some customers have an on-premises two-node cluster and add a third node in the cloud for disaster recovery. By removing the complexity and reducing the risk of misconfiguration, we are giving customers with HANA databases a wide range of options for their disaster protection.
VMblog: You’ve emphasized the automation aspect of the HANA multitarget feature. Why is that important?
Hoagland: To keep an application or database like SAP HANA operational means that the entire IT stack – network, storage, OS, and hardware have to be compatible, operational, and accessible.
In many companies there are different people responsible for each of these “silos” so resolving a downtime incident, may require a team of IT staff. In addition, many SAP ERP systems are installed and configured by highly skilled IT architects then turned over to administrators for day-to-day operation. When their HANA database stops working, the architects who may have written custom scripts are typically unavailable to help. SIOS LifeKeeper eliminates the need for this scripting and ensuring reliable failover in compliance with SAP best practices.
VMblog: And finally, how easy is it for customers to upgrade from v9.6?
Hoagland: They simply upgrade as they normally would and follow the steps provided in the product documentation at https://support.us.sios.com/. Of course, customers under active support can contact our support team with questions.
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