Learn about our CEO, Don Boxley’s industry predictions for what 2023 has to hold in technology, as well as predictions from other prominent leaders in the tech industry.
There is definitely a consensus that SQL Server containers and software-defined perimeter security have a big role in the future of information technology.
DH2i has introduced a new sidecar deployment for SQL Server HA in Kubernetes. This allows customers to run DxEnterprise in a separate container alongside an application container, removing custom image support headaches and simplifying overall deployment.
The prevalence of databases being deployed in cloud-native application environments is rising steadily, and while the choice of database depends upon the workload requirements, this is a notable enhancement to the achievable flexibility when leveraging SQL Server.
We live in a digital society where we expect to be able to hop on our smartphone in the middle of the night and efficiently check the balance of our bank account. In fact, we feel so entitled to this 24/7 level of service and network accessibility that any breach of our expectations—even just for a few seconds—will be immediately greeted by dissatisfaction. Welcome to the heavy expectations put on IT professionals working in financial services. Performance and uptime aren’t the only worries for these companies though. These IT pros must also cope with the reality that their industry represents the most desirable hacking trophies on the planet. In other words, network security and performance level must be perpetually prioritized above all else.
The financial services industry is also accompanied by some other unique challenges:
Business Built on Trust – In financial services, it’s nearly impossible to differentiate the products and services your company offers relative to competitors. Instead, these businesses are built on trust and dependability. Customers are choosing to trust your organization with their hard-earned money, and any security breach or misstep in service level can mean promptly losing a customer to a fully capable alternative.
The Downtime Double-Whammy – Obviously, downtime renders a negative experience for organizations and users in real-time. However, in a financial services setting with very stringent SLAs, a worst-case scenario can also involve customers bringing litigation for harmful or financially debilitating outages.
Extreme Network Heterogeneity – Financial services organizations are often tasked with managing wildly disparate networks. For example, think of a standard bank—managing various branches, datacenters, ATM locations, and probably some sort of remote workforce as well. Add on the fact that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) happen all the time in this industry, and you are looking at some nightmarish network complexity.
Downtime is EXPENSIVE – The banking/finance industry leads the way in downtime expense among all verticals, and ITIC says outage costs can reach up to $5 million per hour for the largest corporations operating in this space.
Despite dealing with planet-leading performance and network security pressures, it’s possible to put yourself in the driver seat as a financial services IT pro. You just need to have the right solutions in your toolkit.
Secure Network Unification
Sprawling and disparate networks can be a huge barrier to innovation for IT teams, and it can easily become an all-consuming black hole of management headaches. However, software-defined perimeter (SDP) technology holds the keys to simplifying this mess. Unifying complex networks can be as easy as completing a lightweight software install on each node you want to connect, and then managing the entire network from one centralized management pane. The best software-defined technologies integrate network high availability as well—an imperative capability for financial services.
Along with consolidating any type of infrastructure, software-defined perimeter technology enables the highest level of network security. Financial services organizations can’t afford the vulnerabilities that accompany traditional security solutions like virtual private networks (VPNs). Every VPN connection at your organization is an attack vector that can lead to a network-wide breach. Software-defined perimeter utilizes Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) tunnels/connections, but also regulates network access at the application level—a much more secure approach that eliminates lateral network attack surfaces.
Push Total Downtime to Zero
Based on the ITIC statistic above ($5 million/hour outage cost), companies can be losing over $1,300 per second in a worst-case scenario. That’s why any solution that can reduce overall downtime by any amount is worth being pursued.
Reducing network and management complexity has an inherent positive impact on downtime. Smart High Availability (HA) software enables additional functionality and automation to push total downtime even closer to zero. To start, Smart HA can unify a high availability framework in the same way that SDP unifies a network. You can manage all your platforms, OSes, versions, and disparate infrastructure (for applications like SQL Server) from one consolidated management pane.
Smart High Availability technology can also help mitigate planned downtime for organizations—enabling such easy patch/update procedures that these processes can be carried out during the regular workday.
Overall, given the scale at which downtime can affect financial services organizations, any solution that pushes downtime closer to zero should be actively pursued. Proactive reconfiguration of your IT budget is much less painful than reacting to the financial and customer service consequences of an unplanned outage. Taking this proactive action can of course be a hard sell for upper management at your organization. So, when proposing a new solution, we recommend first:
DH2i’s DxEnterprise (DxE) Smart High Availability Clustering software is deployed by financial services corporations around the world. Apart from powerful, industry-leading capabilities that help reduce total downtime, some other unique differentiators of DxE include:
Get signed up for a customized demo if you want to learn more.
DxE v22 Enables Application-Level High Availability Clustering for Stateful Containers in Kubernetes (K8s)
FORT COLLINS, CO – November 14, 2022 – DH2i® the leading provider of always-secure and always-on IT infrastructure solutions, today announced the general availability (GA) launch of DxEnterprise (DxE) version 22 (v22) featuring a new container sidecar to enable application-level high availability (HA) clustering for stateful containers in Kubernetes (K8s).
Today, Kubernetes is one of the world’s leading open-source systems for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. The DxE v22 sidecar delivers a separate container that can run alongside an application container in a Kubernetes pod. For database architects and developers the DxE sidecar delivers three key deployment benefits:
“With the DxE v22 sidecar, database architects and developers can enhance and extend the functionality of their K8s environment. For instance, the DxE sidecar enables users to create highly resilient Zero downtime application-level clusters that span K8 pods,” said Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i. “In addition, the DxE sidecar uniquely provides smart HA clustering services to the application container(s) necessary for mission-critical applications.”
Boxley added, “In addition, for medium and large organizations running SQL Server, database-level HA has traditionally been provided by SQL Server Availability Groups. However, SQL Server AGs have not been supported in Kubernetes until recently—hindering organizations’ ability to undergo digital transformations. DxEnterprise support for containers is the answer to the problem.”
DxEnterprise support for containers accelerates an enterprise’s digital transformation by speeding the adoption of highly available stateful containers. DxEnterprise provides SQL Server Availability Group (AG) support for SQL Server containers, including for Kubernetes clusters. It enables customers to deploy stateful containers to create new and innovative applications while also improving operations with near-zero RTO to more efficiently deliver better products and services at a lower cost. Additionally, it helps organizations generate new revenue streams by enabling them to build distributed Kubernetes AG clusters across availability zones/regions, resulting in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments which can rapidly adapt to changes in market conditions and consumer preferences.
To learn more about DxEnterprise v22, please visit: https://dh2i.com/dxenterprise-high-availability/.
Tweet this: @DH2i Launches DxEnterprise Container Sidecar – Enables Application-Level High Availability Clustering for Stateful #Containers in #Kubernetes (#K8s) https://dh2i.com/category/news/
About DH2i
DH2i Company is the leading provider of multi-platform software-defined perimeter (SDP) and smart high availability (HA) clustering software for Windows and Linux. DH2i’s DxOdyssey® SDP software, the unVPN networking solution for Zero Trust security, enables users to create highly available application-level micro-tunnels across any mix of locations and platforms. DH2i’s DxEnterprise® SQL Server clustering – now optimized for containers, delivers an all-in-one solution to maximize performance and minimize downtime. And, DxEnterprise is the only SQL Server clustering solution to deliver fully automatic failover of SQL Server AG in Kubernetes. To learn more, please visit: www.dh2i.com, call: 800-380-5405 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: [email protected].
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PR Contact:
Nicole Gorman
DH2i
[email protected]
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Every disaster recovery strategy needs 3 key components if you want to adequately protect your critical data assets in 2023.
Read this article to learn more about the proactive steps your organization needs to take to secure your SQL Server environment and other critical data assets. You’ll also get a better understanding for the key technical capabilities you need to prioritize in your selection of disaster recovery technology – features like “smart” automation and multi-subnet failover.
Software AG Government Solutions, a trusted provider of FedRAMP solutions, has entered into an official partnership with DH2i. Software AG will be integrating DH2i’s DxEnterprise Smart High Availability Clustering software into its FedRAMP authorized cloud to achieve near-zero downtime within its own SQL Server Availability Group (AG) Kubernetes cluster.
Software AG will also offer this solution to its U.S. federal, state and local government customers—helping them undergo digital transformation and enabling database-level HA for stateful containers for their databases like SQL Server. DH2i’s technology will help these clients push downtime and security holes to zero.
