Skip to content

High Availability: technology that guarantees productivity and credibility

Computer equipment is subject to failures that can bring great inconvenience and damage to companies. In this sense, high availability systems are essential for carrying out activities that rely on energy, location, operation, software, and hardware.

This technology ensures services are available 24/7 without interruptions or loss of information. For this reason, it is extremely important for large organizations, such as public agencies, critical infrastructure, and banks.

In this article, we dive deeper into the subject. Our text is divided into topics to make it easier for you to understand. These are:

  • What is High Availability?
  • What is a High Availability Cluster?
  • How Important is High Availability to Organizations?
  • Advantages of Infrastructure with High Availability Versus Infrastructure Without High Availability
  • High Availability, Redundancy, and Fault Tolerance: What is the Difference?
  • High Availability Products
  • Important Points for the Implementation and Maintenance of High Availability Systems

Enjoy it!

  • What is High Availability?

A high availability (HA) system consists of a technology that must be applied to the computer equipment of large companies and data centers in order to avoid the interruption of activities resulting from failures.

This is possible through an infrastructure designed for maximum uptime, known as 99.999 percent or the “five 9s”.

It works through the allocation of hardware and software, among other solutions, in a redundant way. In practice, this means they will work automatically if any of these items fail.

  • What is a High Availability Cluster?

The word cluster (or clustering) is the same as “agglomeration”, as explained in this article. It is a term used in the most diverse contexts.

In the case of computing, it refers to a technology applied to two or more computers. We call these equipment nodes, and the number of nodes that can compose a cluster is unlimited.

A high availability cluster can be of two types: to be used in hardware and applications. In hardware high availability, we have a connection that makes it possible to change a component if there is an outage.     

In application high availability, the purpose is to ensure that applications work. As such, the cluster avoids long downtime when a system goes down. This model is useful with:

  • Monitoring tools;
  • Replication of systems and computers to replace equipment that may present problems; and
  • Power generators.

In application high availability, a database is synchronized with the instances that make up the cluster, which divides operations among them, assuring that the system will continue to function normally even if an instance is stopped.

  • How Important is High Availability to Organizations?

Regardless of the company’s industry, most of its departments need Internet access to function. A few examples are:

  • Employees responsible for the sales sector use emails and social media to communicate with clients; 
  • Those who lead the teams also use online means to communicate with their subordinates;
  • The purchasing sector needs to be in constant contact with suppliers; and
  • People who take care of marketing also access several platforms to carry out their activities.

We can conclude that high availability systems are of utmost importance to prevent loss of productivity related to time lost with IT disaster recovery.

Likewise, they preserve the credibility of the company, which is also critical, as damage to a brand’s reputation can be a major barrier to its growth. Key benefits of high availability include:

  • Reduction of scheduled downtime;
  • Guarantee of service continuity;
  • High-level performance;
  • Secure data.

  • Advantages of Infrastructure with High Availability Versus Infrastructure Without High Availability

High availability hosting providers perform the same hosting services as traditional infrastructure. However, this is done in a way that eliminates the possibility of downtime by almost 100%. 

What must be taken into account is the cost of this downtime, which is often much higher than most people realize.

A company with affected infrastructure could have impacts on productivity, reduced to almost zero while that infrastructure is down, or still have an interruption that leads to bankruptcy.

That is because the loss of productivity is a secondary concern to the loss of reputation caused by downtime hassles. 

After all, clients prefer to hire the services of accessible and prepared organizations to serve them whenever they need it. In other words, investing in high availability hosting is of paramount importance to keep your company and brand available to your audience.

  • High Availability, Redundancy, and Fault Tolerance: What is the Difference?

A system that features redundancy is not necessarily a high availability solution. For this, it needs to have means to detect failures, the possibility to perform high availability tests, and correct failures related to unavailable components.

Redundancy is hardware-based, while high availability strategies use software most of the time.

When it comes to the difference between high availability and fault tolerance, you should know that the latter requires complete redundancy in hardware. It is also essential to have hardware that identifies failures to ensure the entire system works together.

The advantage of this technology is the ability to retain memory and data for your programs. On the other hand, the adaptation to complex systems can take a little longer. Another problem is that the entire network can crash due to similar software failures presented by redundant systems.

Fault-tolerant systems are effective in preventing equipment problems, but in addition to being expensive, they do not prevent software failures, unlike high availability solutions.

  • High Availability Products

If you have understood the importance of investing in high availability, we cover features that are critical to achieving the performance your business needs in this topic. Among the aspects that should be considered, we highlight:

  • Hardware resilience;
  • Environmental conditions;
  • Data quality; and
  • Durable software.

To have an efficient, high-availability system that addresses these points, it is essential to have resources such as servers, network interfaces, and hard drives that are resistant to problems such as power outages and hardware failures.

Also, you should strategically install multiple web application firewalls on your networks, which enable you to eliminate failures. Another extremely important resources are software stacks capable of resisting failures that may eventually occur.

  • Important Points for the Implementation and Maintenance of High Availability Systems

High availability systems are adaptable to the needs of the organization hiring this service. Nevertheless, certain practices are widely indicated. Some of them are:

  • Redundancy of systems and data through different machines;
  • Deployment of applications on more than one server, in order to avoid machine overloads;
  • Use of components to ensure maximum stability and availability;
  • Spare resources for any failures;
  • Tests capable of guaranteeing availability, performance, and security;
  • Effective data backup and recovery strategies;
  • Conducting tests that help prevent failures related to confidential information; and
  • Use of 100% redundant router, load balancer, firewall, reverse proxy, and monitoring systems.

 

In this article, we discussed what high availability is and its importance to organizations, as well as the difference between redundancy and fault tolerance. We also pointed out aspects that are essential for the implementation of this technology.

If our text was helpful to you, please share it with others who might benefit from this knowledge. On our blog, you can find more content on high availability and information security, check it out. 

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Segura®
Segura® strive to ensure the sovereignty of companies over actions and privileged information. To this end, we work against data theft through traceability of administrator actions on networks, servers, databases and a multitude of devices. In addition, we pursue compliance with auditing requirements and the most demanding standards, including PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 27001 and HIPAA.

Are there good hackers?

Hello and welcome back to our “Mystery Jet Ski.” Much better than those programs about supernatural stuff and alien suppositions. Today we will continue with our exhaustive investigation on the hacker world, and we will delve a little more into the concept of “ethical hacker.” Is it true that there are good hackers? Who are the so-called “White hats”? Who will win this year’s Super Bowl?

Do you already know who the so-called “White Hats” are?

In this blog we never stop saying it: “No one is free from EVIL, because EVIL never rests”, and if in previous articles we saw that a bad hacker, broadly speaking, is a person who knows a lot about computers and uses their knowledge to detect security flaws in company or organization systems and take control of them, today we will see who is the archenemy of the bad hacker or cracker, the superhero of security, networks and programming… “The White Hat Hacker.”

White Hats are “evangelized” hackers who believe in good practice and good ethics, and who use their hacking superpowers to find security vulnerabilities and help correct or shield them, whether in networks, software, or hardware. “Black Hats” would be the rogue hackers we all know for their evilness, and the “White Hats” would be their honest and do-gooder counterpart. Both hack systems, but White Hat hackers do it with the goal of favoring/helping the organization they are working for.

White Hats, ethical hackers

If you thought that piracy and honesty were antonyms, you should know that, within IT, they are not necessarily so. As we pointed out, White Hats do their thing but in an ethical and supervised way, all with the aim of improving cybersecurity, not damaging it. And, dear friend, there is lots of demand for this. White Hats are not short of work, they are in high demand as security researchers and freelancers. They are the candy of organizations to strengthen their cybersecurity. Companies, in fact, take white hat hackers and make them try to hack their systems over and over again. They find and expose vulnerabilities so that the company is prepared for future attacks. They show the ease with which a Black Hat could infiltrate, and even get to the kitchen, in a system, or look for “back doors” within the encryption determined to safeguard the network. We could almost consider the White Hats as another IT security engineer or an insightful network security analyst within the company.

Some known white hat hackers:

  • Greg Hoglund, “The Machine.” Mostly known for his achievements in detecting malware, rootkits, and hacking online games. He has worked for the United States government and its intelligence service.
  • Jeff Moss, “Obama’s Right Hand (on the Mouse)”. He came to work on the US National Security Advisory Council during the Obama term. Today he serves as a commissioner in the World Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace.
  • Dan Kaminsky, “The Competent.” Known for his great feat of finding a major bug in the DNS protocol. This could have led to a complex cache spoofing attack.
  • Charlie Miller, “The Messi of hackers.” He became famous for highlighting vulnerabilities in the products of famous companies like Apple. He won the Pwn2Own edition in 2008, the most important hacking contest in the world. 
  • Richard M. Stallman, “The Hacktivist.” Founder of the GNU project, an essential free software initiative to understand computing without restrictions. Champion of the free software movement since 1980.

Are there more “Hats”? 

We have already talked about the exploits of these White Hats, but what about the previously mentioned “Black Hats”? Are there more “Hats”?  Let’s have a look:

  • Black hats: Well, these are the bad guys, the computer criminals, the ones we know and take for granted. The villains of this story. They start out, perhaps, as inexperienced Script Kiddies and end up as crackers. Pure jargon to designate how bad they are. Some do it alone, selling malicious tools, others work for criminal organizations as sophisticated as the ones in movies.
  • Gray hats: Right in the middle of computer morality, we find these hats, combining the qualities of black and white. They are usually devoted, for example, to looking for vulnerabilities without the consent of the owners of the system, but when they find them they let them know. 
  • Blue hats: These are characterized by focusing all their malicious efforts on a specific subject or group. Motivated perhaps by revenge, they dominate it just enough to execute it. They may also be hired to test specific software for bugs before it is released. They say that their name comes from the blue emblem of the Microsoft employees.
  • Red Hats: The Red Hats do not like the Black Hats at all and act ruthlessly against them. Their life goal? Destroy all evil plans that bad hackers have in their hands. A good Red Hat will always be aware of the initiatives of the Black Hat, their mission is to intercept it and hack the pirate. 
  • Green hats: These are the “newbies” of the hacking world. They want to go further, for their hat to mature into an authentic and genuine Black Hat. They will put effort, curiosity and boldness in said company. They are often seen grazing in packs within hidden hacker communities asking their elders for everything.

Conclusions

Sorry for the Manichaeism, but we have the White Hat that is good, the Black Hat that is bad, and a few other colorful types of hats that fall between these two poles. I know that now you will imagine hackers classified by colors like Pokemon or Power Rangers. If only achieved that with this article, everything was worth it.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

5 Reasons Why Scale Computing HC3 is the Perfect Edge Computing Infrastructure

The key drivers for edge computing.

Edge computing allows applications to run outside of the data center or cloud, close to where they are used and data is generated. Though edge environments are supported by some form of centralized processing, running applications locally, on-premises solves many of the intrinsic challenges of data center and cloud computing.

Data Explosion: More devices generating vast amounts of data.

IoT devices, video systems and environmental sensors are just some of the many technologies saturating our physical spaces. These devices generate massive amounts of data, much of which has value when it can be properly collected and analyzed. But bandwidth isn’t free and transferring all that data to the cloud for processing is both impractical and cost-prohibitive. Edge computing allows all this rich data to be collected and processed locally.

Resiliency: Having applications available when they are needed.

Reliable connectivity is key when applications are running from a centralized location. Whether it’s a complete outage, occasional drop or simply high error rates, any interruption is bound to affect the availability and performance of applications relying on that connection. Running applications locally means they can continue to operate as expected, even without a connection to the cloud or data center.

Latency: The impact of network distance and congestion on application response time.

Information takes time to travel across a network. The longer it takes, the more it impacts end-to-end processing times. Expectations for application response times vary from one application, and organization, to the next. However, the more an application experience benefits from a real-time response, the more important it is to remove distance as a factor. Edge computing brings applications closer to where they are used, reducing lag time and improving efficiency.

Regulation: Protecting privacy and maintaining data sovereignty.

Complying with data security and privacy regulations is both serious and non-trivial. The risk of interception and potential for regulatory non-compliance increases every time data is moved. By definition, the cloud is a fuzzy place, making it difficult to know exactly where data is and where it has been. The more data can be collected and processed on-site, the simpler maintaining compliance becomes.

How Scale Computing HC3 Edge is answering your needs.

1. HC3 Edge is right sized and edge ready.

Scale Computing HC3 Edge meets the definition of edge-ready, right-sized computing. Unlike competitive alternatives, it is not adapted from infrastructure solutions built for another purpose. It has been optimized for non-stop computing in uncontrolled, non-IT environments. Everything that can operate autonomously, does. Everything that can be fixed automatically, is. The architecture makes the platform so lightweight it utilizes a fraction of the resources of other solutions. Simply put, HC3 Edge lets you run the most applications on the smallest hardware with the most reliability and least amount of effort.

2. We remove the barriers to edge computing.

Large-scale, on-premises, distributed infrastructure deployments are the definition of an IT nightmare. Siloed, point solutions each supporting a unique application. Complex virtual environments modeled after those found in the data center. Systems that require skilled onsite support personnel. Architectures that inflate costs and underutilize resources. HC3 Edge replaces all of that with a powerful, cost-effective platform that makes edge computing easier than ever and is unmatched for reliability and availability.

3. We bring a cloud-like experience to on-premises computing.

Most of the infrastructure available for edge computing was not designed for the unique needs of the edge. Edge infrastructure should extend the best elements of both the cloud and data center to local, on-premises computing. Centralized management and monitoring with cloud-like orchestration brings the simplicity of the cloud to the world of edge computing.

4. We deliver the lowest TCO and highest ROI.

With Scale Computing HC3 Edge you eliminate cots from your application infrastructure every step of the way—purchase, deployment, management and maintenance. At the same time you maximize application uptime, use compute resources more efficiently and drastically improve IT team productivity. Add it up and you will see why Scale Computing is the only solution you can bank on.

5. We are recognized as a leader in the industry.

Scale Computing is recognized across the industry by experts such as Gartner, Forbes and IDC. We appeared in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software the year it was first introduced and every year since. Our edge capabilities set us apart from our competitors in this market and year after year our award-winning solution is recognized for product excellence.

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About Scale Computing 
Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Scale Computing HC3 software eliminates the need for traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully integrated, highly available system for running applications. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, the HC3 self-healing platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime. When ease-of-use, high availability, and TCO matter, Scale Computing HC3 is the ideal infrastructure platform. Read what our customers have to say on Gartner Peer Insights, Spiceworks, TechValidate and TrustRadius.

A Step in the Right Direction – Binding Operation Directive 22-01

On November 3rd, 2021, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released Binding Operational Directive 22-01, a compulsory direction with the goal of systematizing and standardizing vulnerability remediation across federal agencies except for defined “national security systems” and “certain systems operated by the Department of Defense or Intelligence Community.”

This new directive requires agencies to update vulnerability management procedures, remediate cataloged vulnerabilities according to the set timeline, and to report on the status of each cataloged vulnerability. Agencies were given two weeks to address specified exploits identified in 2021, and six months for exploits identified before 2021.

New vulnerabilities will be added to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog as CISA identifies a vulnerability that has been assigned a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures ID, there is reliable evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited, and there is a clear path to remediation for the vulnerability. 4% of all vulnerabilities annually are expected to be added to the catalog as most vulnerabilities are not exploited in the wild. CISA hopes to shift “the focus to those vulnerabilities that are active threats.”

While BOD 22-01 only applies to specified federal agencies, CISA hopes that local, state, and private entities will use the KEV catalog to inform their remediation procedures. TOPIA is uniquely positioned to assist organizations of all sizes and industries to remediate the most critical threats to their unique digital infrastructures because TOPIA prioritizes vulnerabilities based on context. Just as CISA now recognizes that it’s functionally impossible to remediate every CVE and the CVSS system is limited in its effectiveness, TOPIA has curtailed its reliance on these outdated methodologies from the outset. When it comes to prioritizing vulnerabilities, context is king.

More information regarding the CVSS system and CVEs can be found in previous articles:

Scoring Security Vulnerabilities: Introducing CVSS for CVEs

Understanding CVSS Scores

What’s the Difference between CVSS and CVE

About Version 2 Digital

Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About VRX
VRX is a consolidated vulnerability management platform that protects assets in real time. Its rich, integrated features efficiently pinpoint and remediate the largest risks to your cyber infrastructure. Resolve the most pressing threats with efficient automation features and precise contextual analysis.

×

Hello!

Click one of our contacts below to chat on WhatsApp

Social Chat is free, download and try it now here!

×