Vecima was having a lot of issues with their current failover tool, PolyServe, and was unsure if these problems stemmed from configuration issues, or the reliability of the product itself. In addition, they had inherent limitations to their failover capability. For example, all nodes were clustered in pairs so that one system could failover to another, but couldn’t continue down the chain in the case of multiple outages or performance impacts. And with PolyServe, even when a failover completed successfully, it took far too long—often taking 15 minutes or more to come up on another box.

Eventually, PolyServe went end-of-life completely and left the Vecima team stuck in a tough place in which their outdated version of the software was not compatible with any type of OS upgrade. Not only that, but they also deemed this old version of PolyServe unable to adequately update databases to handle a SQL Server upgrade. So, ultimately they required a new failover product that could come in and help facilitate upgrading both their OS and database environment.

After exploring available options, Vecima arrived at a crossroads between Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and DxEnterprise.

After careful research and a lengthy proof of concept, Vecima decided to opt for the DH2i software solution, based on its features, functionality, and price. 

“Love the tools, love the support, love the team! Really glad to have found this tool and met some of the team. They are super smart people and have made an amazing product.” – Brian Gale, IT Manager

Vecima was sold on DH2i’s failover capabilities and found it could shrink downtime windows from minutes to seconds. It worked flawlessly for SQL Server instances and was also an appealing solution because it could be used to fail over ANY service that is shared across multiple machines. Additionally, it handles failing over across OSes too, so Linux is now an attractive and viable option for an organization that has previously remained a Windows-only shop. 

“DH2i has been a lifesaver for our company. Before we implemented DH2i, we were experiencing significant downtime due to an unreliable failover tool. After implementing DH2i, we were able to reduce downtime by 95% and improve reliability by 99%. This has resulted in significant cost savings and improved customer satisfaction.” – Brian Gale, IT Manager

DH2i was also a perfect answer to Vecima’s modernization challenges, helping them get unstuck from their legacy OS and SQL Server version, and also helping to shrink planned downtime windows altogether. With DH2i, the Vecima team can now patch SQL Server instances on secondary systems during company uptime without impacting the primary, and then simply failover and patch primaries during company downtime.

The Vecima team also found DH2i high availability (HA) was much easier to implement and manage than alternatives. During the testing period and now after production deployment, Vecima has experienced firsthand how quickly and easily DH2i enables them to organize their SQL Server databases and move them around the cluster as required. If a system fails, the affected instances are automatically restarted on their respective best execution venues. DH2i’s software identifies eligible failover targets using pre-set resource allocations, and if no resource allocations have been set, the instance is simply moved to the first eligible system. 

Another huge component of Vecima’s adoption decision was the associated price tag. DH2i’s solution unlocked huge savings on SQL Server licensing by avoiding the exorbitant expense of SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Even for a company as large as Vecima, Enterprise Edition was going to stretch their budget unsustainably. Not only that, but with DH2i, SQL Server is installed on multiple machines, but the SQL Server instance is only RUNNING on 1 machine at a time, so it only uses 1 license. Ultimately, selecting DH2i helped Vecima save well into the six-figure range on licensing costs alone versus going with SQL Server Enterprise Edition alternative. Massive additional cost savings have been unlocked through a 95% reduction in downtime and drastically improved reliability.