Data center failures can have serious consequences. Critical infrastructures such as electricity grids, as well as banking systems and production plants, should aim to avoid downtimes where possible. That is why high-availability data centers are so important.
Danny Gerber, Senior System Engineer, Channel PreSales Switzerland, Dell Technologies Switzerland in Netzwoche Issue No.02/2022
High-availability data centers ensure, with a high degree of probability, continuity of operations, even when one or more components fail. This is becoming massively important to an increasing number of companies and public institutions that want to avoid the costs and consequential damages associated with failures. Dell Technologies is responding to this requirement with high-availability data center solutions for Swiss SMEs. The latest, high-performance and efficient PowerStore storage array solution and Metro Node platform enable the simple establishment and operation of high-availability data centers. Data can be migrated without any issues, even from third-party storage arrays – and without any downtimes.
Benefits of Dell EMC Metro Nodes
Metro Node virtualizes data on storage arrays, similar to PowerStore storage volumes, to create dynamic, distributed and high-availability data centers. The redundancy of Metro Node reduces the recovery time (RTO) and the recovery point (RPO) to zero. No data is lost and an automatic decision is made regarding the time and method of switchover. This eliminates the factor known as decision time objective (DTO).
Metro Nodes are very versatile. Some examples:
- Mobility: Application workloads between the two data centers can be redistributed at any time without interruptions.
- Availability: Applications continue to run during data center downtimes – without any data losses or decision-making time (0=RTP, 0=RPO, 0=DTO)
- Distribution: A data center no longer has enough storage space, electricity or cooling available.
- Migrations: Uninterrupted data transfer between Dell EMC PowerStore, Unity XT and other third-party storage arrays without any downtime for the host.
- Maximum Metro/array performance: Active-active function does not require any storage array resources as this is offloaded to the specialized Metro Nodes.
- Workload optimized: Metro Node is optimized for virtual server platforms (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Oracle Virtual Machine, AIX VIOS, etc.).
Combine virtual storage and virtual servers from Metro Node for:
- Transparent migration of virtual machines and storage resources over synchronous distances.
- Improved utilization and availability across heterogeneous arrays and multiple sites.
The main difference
The distance between Metro clusters can be up to 100 km with a maximum RTT (round trip time) of 10 ms and taking into account the host and application requirements. The Metro cluster can be placed in the same building in different fire suppression zones or distributed across various sites. All of this might be the difference between riding through a local fault or fire without an outage.
Image 1. Metro Node Aktiv-Aktiv:
With Metro Node, you can withstand failures of storage arrays, cluster components, an entire site failure or loss of communication between sites (when two clusters are deployed), and still keep applications and data online and available.
With PowerStores and Metro Nodes, you can transform the delivery of IT into a flexible, efficient, reliable and resilient service.
Concentrated power with DataStore and Dell Technologies
Creating high-availability data centers not only requires good design and planning, but also professional implementation. This is where the DataStore experts come in. Together with Dell Technologies, they offer professional advice and effective support. DataStore develops individual solutions that fully meet the requirements of companies and help them achieve their business objectives. In this way, customers benefit from the long-standing experience of DataStore experts, who have been involved in a wide range of projects and successfully collaborated with companies from various sectors over the years, and from the innovative strength of a leading provider in the data center market.
For further questions, please get in touch with:
DataStore AG
Pfadackerstrasse 6
8957 Spreitenbach
info@datastore.ch
www.datastore.ch