High-Availability Computing

Users want their systems to be ready to service them at all times, like the electrical grid, and interruptions to service can cause a significant loss in productivity. For this reason, high availability has to be one of the key design elements in the datacenter. Redundancy eliminates single points of failure and must be the first step in setting up a high availability environment, but adding more components to an overall system design can also undermine efforts to achieve the intended goal. That is because complex systems inherently have more potential failure points and are more difficult to implement correctly.

Balancing IT Solution Design

As a server-centric platform provider, Great Northern Consulting has been providing high availability solutions for 25 years, so we understand the balance between critical design elements. Any HA plan starts with the customer’s RTP/RPO requirements and turns them into a platform design model that will be as efficient as possible while meeting those requirements.

In the Unix space, high availability has been fundamental since the first tier one application had to be deployed, and clustering was the major tool to get our customers the proper protection. With the advent of hypervisor technology, the rules have changed and most clients use products like VMware to protect their applications. No matter what platform the customer uses for high availability, Great Northern Consulting has the skills to help them implement the best solution that will meet their business objectives.