I remember when Storage Area Networks (SAN) were introduced in the late 1990s as a way to provide very fast access to storage from all connected servers. SANs became the storage technology to deliver clustered server solutions for high availability, enabling a common shared database to be accessed by a failover server in the event a primary server failed.
SANs, although fast, were expensive and difficult to set up and manage. Other solutions that used high-speed efficient replication technology to synchronize data between two servers became a popular lower-cost alternative to provide high availability.
The Challenge
Fast forward 20 years, SANs are simpler and less expensive to set up and manage and are a very common solution today when failover from one server to another is required to maintain application availability Service Level Agreements (SLA). Now many companies are looking to move workloads to the cloud to provide lower cost and higher availability. Are you planning to move a workload to the cloud?
One thing many people don’t realize, until they do the research, is that a shared storage SAN infrastructure is not available in the cloud. Cloud providers talk availability of 99.9% for the infrastructure, power, cooling, storage, network, compute – but not a word on application availability!
If you require highly available applications and access to data in the cloud, you need to add a software-based high availability solution to your technology stack.
The Solution
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recognizes that additional solutions for high availability are required and has a special team focused on Microsoft workloads running in AWS. On July 11, AWS awarded SIOS their Microsoft Workloads Competency status within the AWS Partner Network. This differentiates SIOS as a partner that provides demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success with specific tools to monitor and recover applications and data with minimum operational impact, providing high availability for Microsoft workloads, and delivering solutions seamlessly on AWS.
Take a few minutes to review the SIOS solution and AWS Quickstart on the AWS Marketplace. Here’s who’s talking about SIOS and its new AWS Microsoft Workloads Competency status:
- IT Toolbox: https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/shrutiumathe/sios-technology-earns-aws-microsoft-workloads-competency-status-to-help-management-of-microsoft-based-applications-on-aws-071219
- TFIR: https://www.tfir.io/2019/07/11/sios-technology-achieves-aws-microsoft-workloads-competency-status/
- CRN:|https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/new-aws-competency-for-isvs-migrating-microsoft-workloads
- CloudCow: https://cloudcow.com/content/best-options-for-protecting-sql-server-in-the-aws-elastic-compute-cloud/#.XS3itehKgWX
