Guest: Ian Allton (LinkedIn)
Company: SIOS Technology Corp. (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk
Keywords: High Availability Cluster Software, HA Cluster

SIOS Technology provides high availability (HA) cluster software that helps protect IT infrastructure. In manufacturing, ERP systems and databases like SAP, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, and SQL Server manage various processes throughout their operations. One of the challenges with this is downtime of any of these operations can be disruptive, even if only for a few minutes, not only for that particular operation but for others too. One of the most common ways to protect these workloads is using failover clustering.

In this episode of TFiR Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sat down with Ian Allton, Solutions Architect at SIOS Technology, to discuss high availability considerations for the manufacturing industry. Allton says, ”One of the things that SIOS Technology does is we keep very close in step, very close with the vendors of software so that we can make sure that we’ve tested all the features, the latest release, and also that we can ensure that failover is going to work when it needs to work.”

One of the reasons why failover clustering is the most common way to protect workloads is because it is cost-efficient and delivers upwards of 99.99% availability. Failover clustering software works by configuring a second server with the same specifications as the primary server, and then the failover clustering software monitors the operating system and the application. Should it detect an error or issue, it will failover the software from the primary server to the secondary server, avoiding an outage.

Application Recovery Kits (ARKs) come with SIOS LifeKeeper to provide application-specific intelligence and help automate the configuration process. The Generic Application Recovery Kit enables customers to use SIOS LifeKeeper to start, stop and check scripts for any application customers want to run. Open source HA, on the other hand, doesn’t provide the same level of intelligence or configuration check.

SIOS Technology has worked with a wide range of manufacturing companies and recommends protecting the vital components within their system using failover software like SIOS LifeKeeper. By choosing a clustering product that is application aware, it ensures that failovers are going to be reliable while being able to maintain best practice. The company feels that if customers do want to run clustering software, they may benefit from a high availability specialist like SIOS Technology who can best advise on configuration and ensure that failover is going to work when it needs to.

About Ian Allton: Ian Allton, Solutions Architect at SIOS Technology Corp., has more than 20 years of experience in helping enterprise IT teams implement high availability and disaster protection strategies to protection their mission-critical Linux applications from downtime. Before joining SIOS, Ian worked for Hitachi where he served as principal Technical Consultant in the America’s File and Content Global Services Practice and as Master Pre-Sales Technical Consultant.

About SIOS Technology: SIOS Technology Corp. high availability and disaster recovery solutions ensure availability and eliminate data loss for critical Windows and Linux applications operating across physical, virtual, cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. SIOS clustering software is essential for any IT infrastructure with applications requiring a high degree of resiliency, ensuring uptime without sacrificing performance or data – protecting businesses from local failures and regional outages, planned and unplanned. Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (https://us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide.

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.