Enhancing data availability and scalability using Veritas Alta Application Resiliency with Amazon EBS

It’s no secret that the increased adoption of cloud computing has transformed the way enterprises are managing and protecting their mission critical applications and data. Security and compliance becomes a shared responsibility between cloud providers and their customers. The shared model helps clarify which aspects the cloud provider is responsible for, and which aspects fall under the customer’s responsibilities. This means that operational considerations, such as performance, scalability, and resiliency, must be top-of-mind for cloud administrators, architects, and CTOs alike.

Given the nature of these workloads and their aversion to latency and downtime, the combination of Veritas Alta™ Application Resiliency (AAR) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a proven solution that can handle the performance requirements of your applications. In addition, it can provide high availability in the event of a failure. Built upon the proven technology of InfoScale, AAR is a software solution that provides enterprise-class software-defined storage management, application-aware high availability (HA), and disaster recovery (DR) for services running in the cloud. Veritas AAR is uniquely capable of delivering the required HA/DR and storage components to successfully adopt the shared responsibility model.

In this post, we explore the benefits and features of Veritas AAR with Amazon EBS. We showcase how the combined solution empowers businesses to achieve HA, seamless scalability, and efficient data management in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

Extensible HA

Veritas AAR is known for its robust HA and DR capabilities. By deploying this solution in an AWS environment with Amazon EBS, organizations gain access to advanced features that make sure of data availability and minimize downtime. The combination of features such as the Veritas Cluster File System (CFS) and Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS) with Amazon EBS allows for shared data volumes among multiple instances in parallel. It also establishes a highly available infrastructure that is durable across OS crashes, application faults, storage interruptions, and even the failure of an entire Availability Zone (AZ). This level of resiliency is achieved while delivering a recovery point objective (RPO) of zero and a recovery time objective (RTO) in many cases of 60 seconds or less (depending on your application startup time). Essentially, if your application, or even an entire instance, fails, another instance (either in the same or a disparate AZ) can seamlessly take over, maintaining continuous access to data, and thereby mitigating any operational disruptions. This combination enables businesses to achieve higher service levels and meet the most stringent orchestration and availability requirements. For customers seeking even further assurances that service outage recovery can be fully automated, AAR is also capable of replicating application data on EBS volumes between AWS Regions while facilitating automatic network reconfiguration with direct Amazon Route 53 integration.

In the following section, we examine the features and configurations for enhanced HA in different AWS environments:

Local failover within a single Availability Zone

In this example, applications can be easily moved between EC2 instances running within the same Availability Zone. This is done by incorporating the process of attaching and detaching the underlying EBS volume during a typical failover sequence. This is supported on all EBS volumes both for Linux and Windows-based applications. Additionally, for those applications running on Linux, the Multi-Attach feature of Amazon EBS is also supported with AAR.

To learn more about Multi-Attach feature support with Veritas and Amazon EBS, refer to this article.

Failover between multiple Availability Zones with local storage

With this configuration, application data can be transparently mirrored between EC2 instances using locally attached EBS volumes across multiple Availability Zones. Referred to as a stretched or campus cluster, the Flexible Storage Sharing feature of AAR can automatically export Amazon EBS devices initialized by Veritas Volume Manager to any node within a single cluster namespace. This allows applications to automatically failover between Availability Zones while achieving an RPO of 0. After this, the resulting VxFS mount can be enabled for active/active or active/passive access.

Failover between Availability Zones within a single AWS Region using Volume Replicator

In this example, AAR can be configured to synchronously replicate data between Availability Zones within the same AWS Region. Referred to as a Replicated Data Cluster, this option is especially useful for those applications running on Windows that require an RPO of 0 and are latency averse. File systems in this model are always active/passive. However, this configuration can be combined with the previously mentioned configuration for local failover within a single Availability Zone to make sure of the highest level of availability and resiliency.

Failover between Availability Zones of different AWS Regions using Volume Replicator

To fully complement the HA functionality previously described, AAR is extensible to support DR between any multiple AWS Regions or AWS Outposts installations. Leveraging the same Volume Replicator feature, only this time in Asynchronous mode, application recovery can be fully automated and secure with support for VPC peering and Route 53 DNS. To maximize workload availability, this option can be easily integrated with the configurations for local failover within a single Availability Zone and failover between multiple Availability Zones with local storage.

Efficient scalability

Scalability is a key consideration when designing cloud infrastructure. AAR, combined with quickly available and expandable EBS volumes, enables businesses to scale their storage resources effortlessly. Amazon EBS provides flexible and scalable block storage options, allowing organizations to adjust their volume types based on changing business requirements. AAR complements this by providing dynamic volume management and efficient data distribution across multiple storage volumes, as well as local EC2 instance store devices with our Smart I/O™ feature. As a result, businesses can easily scale their storage capacity and meet the growing demands of their applications without compromising performance or availability.

Users who are keen to drive high IOPS (up to 256,000) at sub-millisecond latency have the option to use Amazon EBS io2 Block Express (BX) volumes. These volumes were designed for the largest, most I/O intensive, and mission critical application deployments, such as Oracle, SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL Server, and SAS Analytics. Veritas AAR built with io2 BX brings application assurance and SAN-like storage features to the cloud for users that were previously relegated to deploying on-premises.

Seamless data management

Managing data effectively is vital for maintaining efficiency and making sure of business continuity. AAR offers comprehensive data management capabilities that seamlessly integrate with Amazon EBS. With AAR’s Volume Manager, organizations gain enhanced control over their storage volumes, enabling efficient allocation and management of resources. The combination of AAR and Amazon EBS also allows for data replication across different AZs, making sure of data durability and providing DR capabilities. Moreover, with the SmartTier™ feature of AAR, users can easily tier data between EBS volumes and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) targets based on a flexible access-based or file type policy. By leveraging AAR’s data management features in conjunction with Amazon EBS, businesses can optimize their storage infrastructure and make sure of data integrity and reliability.

Cost optimization

In addition to the benefits of HA, scalability, and efficient data management, AAR with Amazon EBS can help organizations optimize costs. Amazon EBS provides flexible pricing models, allowing businesses to choose the most cost-effective storage options based on their specific needs. AAR further enhances cost optimization by enabling efficient resource utilization and data distribution, making sure of the optimal use of storage resources. By leveraging AAR and Amazon EBS together, organizations can achieve the right balance between performance and cost, while maximizing their return on investment.

Conclusion

In the era of digital transformation, where data availability, scalability, and efficient management are paramount, the combination of Veritas Alta™ Application Resiliency and Amazon EBS proves to be a winning solution. With AAR’s HA features, seamless scalability, and robust data management capabilities, integrated with the flexible and scalable storage options provided by EBS volumes, businesses can achieve a highly reliable and efficient cloud infrastructure. By leveraging this powerful combination, organizations can unlock new levels of agility, scalability, and cost optimization, empowering them to meet the demands of today’s data-intensive world and stay ahead of the competition.

To learn more about improved availability and scalability using Veritas Alta Application Resiliency with Amazon EBS, register for our joint webinar on June 22^nd, 2023.

For more information about Veritas InfoScale and Veritas Alta™ Application Resiliency, please visit veritas.com.

This blog post was co-written by AWS and Veritas, an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and Storage Competency Partner.