In 2020 we have seen more enterprises migrating more of their mission-critical applications, ERPs and databases to the cloud. However, not all of these migrations have been smooth. I have personally witnessed cloud migration projects dramatically slowed and even stopped due to a lack of planning for application availability, the complexity of retrofitting ‘DIY High Availability’, misunderstanding related to what a ‘lift and shift’ entails and unexpected costs.
There are a number of best practices, cloud checklists, and other ways for organizations to prepare for the cloud. The following best practices should be factored into every migration strategy for high…
The importance of uptime in a post pandemic world
As vaccines roll into production and roll out to facilities and communities, and companies are beginning to prepare for reentry to normal. Many articles and writers, both in technical and non-technical spheres, are predicting that ‘normal’ in the post-pandemic era will look a lot different from the ‘normal’ we were used to in 2020. Experts vary, but genuinely agree that every business and type of industry will see a change in what was ‘normal’. This change will affect everything from academics to manufacturing plants to financial institutions to houses of worship…
Disaster recovery grief can hit you out of nowhere if you haven’t implemented the right enterprise availability architecture. Meet our friend Dave in IT to walk us through the 5 stages of disaster grief.
Stage 1: Denial
Dave in IT: “Uh oh. What’s that alert? It’s just a little application crash, right? No big deal. I’ll have things up and running in no time.”
In the land of enterprise availability there is no such thing as a little application crash or no big deal. Companies have SLA with real money on the line. …
It’s the Hallmark movie season, I mean Christmas season, I mean Hallmark Christmas movie season… (don’t judge too harshly, I’m a father of six young ladies, a hopeless romantic, and married to an amazing spouse who enjoys a good holiday laugh and happy ending). If you are in the Hallmark movie season, you know that it is highly likely that you’ll hear the phrase, “Why is love so complicated?” It will be spoken just before the heartbroken young person has developed feelings for a new love interest, and is ready to dance the night away in their arms, just as…
What to do when you inherit a mess
I grew up in a large immediate family, and an even larger group of well-meaning aunts, uncles, and family friends. Anyone who has ever been a part of a large family has probably, on more than one occasion, received a hand-me-down or had well-intentioned relatives give you a freebie. . . And if so, you know that beneath the surface of that cool-sounding inheritance, the rumored stylish clothes, or the old “family car” a nightmare could be lurking. …
A Successful Failure
Houston we have a problem! It is an iconic line that reminds countless space buffs and movie fans about the great difficulty, potential disaster, and the perilous state of the Apollo 13 space mission — a mission NASA now calls “A Successful Failure.” Ignoring your own application availability alerts may not go down in history as a defining moment, but can also wreak similar havoc
Now back to 1970:
“A routine stir of an oxygen tank ignited damaged wire insulation inside it, causing an explosion that vented the contents of both of the Service Module’s (SM) oxygen…
Allow me to jog your memory . . .
Maybe today you haven’t had a failure in a dozen or more months and suddenly the slam dunk renewal for your high availability software licenses is under the redline of the CFO’s pen. Or perhaps, due in part to the overuse of the term, clever marketing, or the redefinition of high availability your CIO, once the most die-hard availability fan, has begun to waver on its value. …
Understand the cloud market
A number of analyst firms are predicting an ever-increasing number of deployments of applications, databases, and solutions in the cloud. According to Gartner, firms are “moving to the cloud at an increasing rate.”[1] In fact, Gartner and other analysts expect the pace of cloud migration and deployment will continue to accelerate, driven in large part by the pace of innovation in the cloud. …
Tips from the movies — Multiplicity
Multiplicity is a 1996 American science fiction comedy film starring Michael Keaton as Doug Kinney, a busy construction worker struggling to make time for his family and his demanding job. When a scientist offers to clone him, Doug agrees to just make meeting his schedule and commitments easier. But then the copies of him begin making copies of themselves. By the time the last copy is made the point is clear, cloning may not be all it’s cracked up to be, or at the very least comes with some strong warnings, challenges and side effects. …
5 signs that it will take more than a blog post to fix your high availability
The signs are there. The warning lights are flashing. In your gut, you can sense it. Maybe you can’t sleep. Your problems with high availability are deep. But, maybe you are not quite sure.
1. If you think your cloud SLA is all you need for high availability
Cloud solutions have provided great advancements in increased hardware availability and resilience. However, application high availability requires more than just selecting the right hypervisor or cloud provider. Your strategy for high availability cannot stop with the SLA provided by the cloud or a virtualization provider. As quoted by Wired, “The almost four-day Amazon outage of April 2011 did not breach Amazon’s EC2 SLA, which as a…
Cassius Rhue
Cassius leads the Customer Experience team at SIOS Technology responsible for customer success.
