Application-aware HA solution HPE Serviceguard for Linux (SGLX) can pay for itself by preventing a single downtime event. And SGLX’s new Flex Storage Add-On enables HA without costly shared storage.
When you’re running mission critical Linux workloads, even a minute of unplanned downtime means a lot of unplanned cost. It starts with lost productivity, which can impact sales right away. That leads to economic loss—not just from reduced production and revenue, but from the loss of valuable data and the cost of recovery. And, as news of the outage travels fast, reputational damage can be the biggest cost of all.
It’s easy to see then why downtime costs $25,000 per hour for a third of all companies, according to a 2019 IDC study.[1] For large enterprises, the figure rises to $100,000 per hour.
And so, for many customers, avoiding even one downtime event can quickly repay the small cost of an effective high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solution.
HPE Serviceguard for Linux (SGLX) is a software solution that ensures 24x7 application availability by continuously monitoring the health of your infrastructure, and other resources impacting availability, within a cluster. SGLX has been protecting mission critical environments for decades, and becomes more battle-hardened and feature rich with each update.
If you haven’t heard of SGLX before, this post is your introduction. And if you have, read on to learn about its latest features like the SGLX Flex Storage Add-On, which removes the need for costly and complex shared storage.
Make always-on easy with automation
Serviceguard for Linux is the leading application-targeted high availability and disaster recovery solution from HPE. It uses automation to give you protection for mission critical workloads and data that is easy and robust. For example:
- You can recover fast from any failure – SGLX detects failures across the whole stack and initiates recovery in as few as 4 seconds (based on HPE testing)
- It helps you reduce human error – Human error is the biggest cause of downtime, according to an ITIC survey. With SGLX you can use time-tested algorithms to deliver unattended HA and DR, instead of requiring skilled people who could be on other projects. It’s been proven in the most demanding environments.
- Data integrity is protected – You can preserve the accuracy and completeness of data under any failover scenario, to reduce compliance risks and make sure data-driven decisions are based on sound information.
- Planned downtime is minimized too – With SGLX unique features you can carry out non-disruptive maintenance more often.
If these powerful features sound complicated to set up, don’t worry. SGLX’s intuitive GUI makes it possible to set up a cluster in just a few clicks. Running a configuration check take just one click.
And there’s one other key difference between SGLX and other HA and DR solutions. SGLX is application-aware, which means you have ready-to-use integrated solutions for SAP HANA, Oracle, SQL, and others. Application-aware SGLX solutions are frequently updated to support the latest versions of your software and leverage the latest features, to provide best in class availability for these workloads.
New Flex Storage add-on removes need for shared storage
SGLX receives frequent product updates to meet mission critical customers’ changing needs. New for October is the SGLX Flex Storage Add-On.
With Flex Storage, you can now deploy an enterprise-grade HA solution with SGLX on any kind of storage architecture – including persistent memory, local/direct-attached/disaggregated storage, and HCI. Previously, SGLX required a traditional SAN to create a cluster.
Flex Storage add on brings lots of new benefits. You can:
- Realize TCO savings by running on deploying SGLX on more cost-efficient storage architectures. SAN, which can be expensive and complex, isn’t needed.
- Adopt new software-defined technologies faster, with reduced risk and uncompromised availability, by protecting them with SGLX. It’s a standardized, repeatable approach to HA that you can re-use for any storage architecture.
- Remove dependencies on shared storage when running high-availability environments for applications such as SAP S4/HANA and NFS.
With Flex Storage, SGLX can protect applications running on almost any storage architecture. You have one unified solution and fewer hardware expenses. Learn more in the SGLX brochure.
First to integrate SAP HANA Multi-target Replication
Earlier this year we also launched SGLX Premium Edition for SAP HANA. It’s the industry’s first automated HA and DR solution to leverage HANA Multi-target System Replication, which is HANA’s own data replication system.
By integrating native HANA features with the power of the SGLX solution, SGLX Premium Edition for SAP HANA provides the best possible unattended recovery across multiple HANA tiers.
Customers benefit from:
- Protection across multiple tiers with enhanced redundancy.
- Up to three standby HANA instances in one SGLX cluster, providing full HA capabilities even when operating from the DR site.
- Support for dual-purpose instances. For example, you can automatically stop dev and QA instances and use them to recover the production workload.
- A seamless shift from standby instances back to production after recovery of the primary site.
- Coordinated failover of multiple SAP applications (like S/4 HANA, NetWeaver), by consolidating them in the same SGLX cluster.
What does all of this add up to? Real peace of mind that should your critical SAP HANA workload fail, your operations won’t be disrupted.
A small price for huge savings
Problems that lead to unplanned downtime can originate anywhere in your stack and cost your business thousands of dollars, along with damage to your brand and reputation.
That’s why a solution that prevents even one downtime event is sure to quickly pay for itself – especially when that solution helps you reduce TCO by reducing hardware requirements, providing efficient automation, and much more.
To get started with Serviceguard for Linux, talk to your HPE representative or check out the resources below.
Meet Compute Experts blogger Balaji Venkatraman, Worldwide Product Manager
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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[1] IDC, What Are Some of the Leading Causes of Application Downtime? How Much Does Application Downtime Cost Businesses? Doc # US45065819, 2019
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