Everyone knows you need to protect your data. It’s become a truism of our times. But, the thing is, there’s no intrinsic value in data alone. Unless you can index, search, or analyze it, it’s just passive information. This is why the apps, services, and other components you use to interrogate and act on your data are so important. These are the delivery vehicles for your data, and they are the other part of the equation. So, it’s key that businesses know how to keep both their data and their applications secure and available.
Despite this fact, too many organizations opt for a pure data solution – and neglect the resiliency of apps. Even though most companies could easily point to the mission-critical apps that keep them up and running as a business. The danger is, the impact of this oversight might only become fully apparent when you face an outage or critical systems go down.
In a world where people expect 24/7 service, you don’t just need to protect data, you need to keep it available. Below, we take a look at why this approach is so significant and how you can find the version of high availability that is right for your business.
Changing your focus to availability is more than a technical conversation; it’s a shift from a tactical approach to a strategic one. It moves attention back to your business outcomes first. So, you can then decide how technology can support them.
Lots of businesses would tell you, for example, that they need to move their apps to the cloud. But many would struggle to say why. A better starting point is to ask, ‘what does success mean for our business?’ This will produce answers like reduce costs, increase flexibility, or improve service levels. The cloud may well be a crucial part of the solution. But the truth is, no two businesses are the same. That’s why you need to architect service uptime based on the needs of your business. When you know what’s important to your business, it will become clear which apps and data you need to prioritize and the levels at which you need to be able to control availability.
The Cloud and Availability
On the subject of cloud, it’s obviously a major component of enterprise IT. And in our uncertain times, it’s one of the few options you have if you want to grow your IT footprint.
The drawback, in terms of availability, is that threats to uptime can come from far and wide when you base systems in the cloud. Take, a simple residential internet outage. It can now have a significant impact on your ability to manage your infrastructure (and your applications). It begs the question, when your people can be affected this much, this easily, how do you maintain your critical business services?
The answer is a single platform that spans resiliency, storage, and data protection. Just the kind of solution Veritas can bring together thanks to the right mix of technology, expertise, and partnerships – with a provider like AWS. This depth and breadth of understanding is key to being able to create a solution that’s tailored to your needs.
The Right Version of High Availability
What does availability that’s based on your business’ needs look like? Here are some of the ways you can take charge of the cost and the effectiveness of your app availability strategy.
- Use a highly granular approach - not all data is equal: you should be able to prioritize the hottest data sets. You should also be able to control failover at the app level. So, you don’t need to interrupt the other apps that a host is using.
- Take advantage of automation - even a single recovery involves many moving parts across regions. So, imagine what’s involved in thousands of instances. Fortunately, it is possible to logically group sequences for recovery. Then you can automatically control them in concert.
- Test, at will - make sure you can test your recovery procedures without interrupting your day-to-day operations. This way, you’re not waiting to find out if you’re ready. You know that you are.
- Don’t forget external factors - does your provider help you to take into account external factors, such as network configuration changes when formulating your recovery plan or workflow?
All of these principles are possible with the Veritas Enterprise Data Services Platform (EDSP). It gives you the ability to deploy mission-critical applications in AWS, knowing they will be resilient, performant, and protected.
This comprehensive approach might be a change in mindset: from reactive recovery to pro-active availability. But it could be the difference between staying operational in the face of disaster or interruptions like blackouts and avoiding the monetary and reputational cost that can come with downtime.
If you would like to learn more about how to unite data protection and high availability, get in touch. We have thirty years’ experience in protecting mission-critical apps for customers. And by applying it in the sandbox that is AWS, we can create powerful – and unique – solutions.
