Mission-critical applications are usually easy to recognize. They are the applications that enable whatever industry we are in, the applications that allow us to make money. For manufacturers, it is the ERP system. For a hospital it is the patent management system. For banks, it is the core banking systems. Applications like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle databases and SAP are often at the core of mission critical applications. These are the systems that operations teams get out of bed at 3 a.m. to fix. These systems need a very reliable platform.
The core features of the SimpliVity platform are well-suited to mission-critical applications. Global unified management and data efficiency are very beneficial to mission-critical tier-1 applications.
For some customers, the mission-critical systems run in a small number of data centers spread around the country or the world. The ability to provide DR from one data center to another is crucial to keeping the business running. SimpliVity’s global deduplication allows efficient replication of mission-critical systems. Data efficient replication enables more frequent replication and a shorter recovery point objective (RPO) without requiring a more expensive WAN link. The fact that every replication point is a full VM backup allows for near-instant restore. Fast RTO is important for these mission-critical applications, because downtime means lost revenue.
For some customers, the mission-critical systems run in every single retail branch, and mission-critical data is distributed all around the country or the world. Again, the ability to replicate the data to another branch or back into the head office reduces risk. Because providing simplified and unified management for hundreds of branches is crucial, SimpliVity integrates into the hypervisor platform management, delivering policy-based management of VMs across multiple locations. Customers report spending significantly less time managing remote offices after deploying SimpliVity. SimpliVity also has the ability to deploy a very small infrastructure to these branches, allowing the data efficiency and policy-based management to be deployed to more branches without a huge cost.
Enterprise customers do not take their mission-critical applications lightly. Adopting a new hardware platform and a new hyperconverged paradigm is a decision that requires much consideration. Luckily, enterprise customers have the resources to evaluate these changes before deploying them into production. Start with the test and development systems and qualify the suitability of the platform and the operational benefits.
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Learn MoreCustomers often find massive benefits in simplifying management and data efficiency, outweighing any perceived risk with new techniques. The risks around using a new supplier are usually addressed by buying the SimpliVity platform from a partner like Cisco. Using the Cisco UCS platform with OmniStack allows customers the safety of a vendor they trust and the benefits of hyperconvergence.
Availability is crucial to mission-critical applications, and downtime must be avoided. SimpliVity provides a platform with hardware redundancy inside each node as well as node redundancy within a cluster, which means that nodes can be added to a SimpliVity data center for capacity growth without downtime. This adds both compute capacity for VMs and storage capacity. In addition, there is huge complexity to building a modern data center. Using a hyperconverged platform reduces the amount of complexity that needs to be managed.
SimpliVity’s core features of simplified global management and data efficiency match well to the needs of mission-critical applications. With due diligence, it is easy to deploy and maintain mission-critical applications on a hyperconverged platform. SimpliVity’s partnerships with established hardware vendors further reduce risk.
