A complete solution for building a fault-tolerant private cloud in small companies or branches

Often in small companies and in large organizations they do not think about how critical downtime can be, for example, such important applications as 1C server, telephony server, etc. Any hardware and software can get stuck sooner or later, and then the work of the system administrator (or even entire IT departments) boils. The management is very dissatisfied, it requires to solve the problem here and now, and the administrator can only say - be patient, we are working on solving the problem. When analyzing the reasons, it may turn out that the management warned about problems - we need a new server, the old one barely survives, we don’t have full backups, a backup server, etc. Yes, and modern virtualization tools often do not offer a ready-made and simple fail-safe solution. It happens that the company already uses virtualization, but critical servers and data are still not backed up and in case of failure, the downtime of the information system can reach from several minutes to several hours. Also an important role in this process is played by the level of qualifications of the sysadmin. If we consider small businesses, then usually a sysadmin is one (and that may be coming). However, the solution is still there!

DEPO Computers recently introduced the DEPO Cloud 200 solution, which allows even relatively small enterprises to obtain a high level of fault tolerance without being spent on expensive specialists. The main focus of the decision is on ease of installation, configuration and support. DEPO Cloud 200 is two servers that work as a failover cluster with virtualization and high availability of virtual machines. As a virtualization management solution, Stratus Avance software is used, which does not require a highly qualified IT specialist for its implementation and maintenance:



All data on the servers are constantly synchronized in real time. The servers are in hot standby, so if you find any problems with the availability of the main server, the second server takes over its functions and does not require any administrator involvement.
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It is important to note that Avance does not require additional third-party software and the solution as a whole turns out to be more profitable than similar solutions to ensure fault tolerance. Also, DEPO Cloud 200 does not use external storage systems and generally does not use expensive server components. The total cost is lower than its counterparts from other manufacturers by 10 - 30%, as well as about 10% below the component composition.

In itself, the solution is very closely integrated with the server hardware, so that the possible failure of the iron can also be foreseen. Even the server's RAID controller is monitored, so server maintenance is minimized. The control software constantly performs proactive monitoring of various indicators (there are about 150 of them) - from the supply voltage and temperature to the correction of errors in the RAM. In case of deviation of values ​​from the norm - the software immediately reacts to them, incl. sending a report to the administrator by e-mail and reporting a problem to the Stratus technical support.



When delivering the DEPO Cloud 200 solution, the cluster configuration is not done by the client, but by our specialists, although installing and configuring Avance is easier than ever — it takes no more than 20-30 minutes for both servers. The very configuration and administration is carried out using the web interface.



The servers included in the solution may not necessarily be next to each other. They can be located up to 5km away from each other, while the key requirement for such remote server placement is data transmission delays of no more than 10ms (it’s enough to organize a network connection using standard 1Gbit / s adapters or such as Intel X520 - but this already 10 Gbit / s).



The virtualization platform itself is based on a deeply modernized Citrix XenServer. At the same time, virtually all the operating systems of the Microsoft Windows line can be installed in virtual machines (although not older than W2k SP4, XP SP3). It is also permissible to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x, 5.x and CentOS 4.x, 5.x. Support for newer OS is planned, incl. Windows Sever 2012, RHEL 6.x, CentOS 6.x. Currently, up to 16 virtual machines are supported, and the latest version of Avance supports up to 24 machines.

Summarize

DEPO Cloud 200 is great for implementing virtualization in small companies or branch offices in cases where you need to provide fault tolerance and high availability of services and applications without creating additional burden on IT professionals. At the same time, it is possible to deliver a turnkey solution - with full installation and configuration for each specific customer.

In general, the solution can significantly reduce the costs of implementing virtualization and building a private cloud and is focused on companies and branches with the number of jobs in the infrastructure from 25 to 50.

senko ,
Lead Product Manager DEPO Computers