Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition includes significant enhancements to Failover Clustering, a key technology that supports disaster recovery (DR) and high availability by allowing you to combine multiple servers to form a fault-tolerant cluster on physical hardware or in virtual machines. A major enhancement is Storage Replica, Microsoft's first native solution for zero-data-loss disaster recovery, Storage Replica allows organizations to configure separate sites within a metro area to mirror data with crash-consistent volumes in order to ensure full data recovery in the event of a site outage. Windows Server 2016 includes a number of other important new and enhanced features for Failover Clusters, offering significant benefits in areas including availability and fault tolerance, Hyper-V virtualization, storage and infrastructure costs, ease of deployment, manageability, security, scale, performance, hybrid cloud support, health monitoring and audit reporting.
Windows Server 2016 is a cloud-tested platform that takes technology proven in Microsoft's vast Azure public cloud, including Azure's software-defined data plane, and makes it available for on premises deployments. As hybrid networks have become the norm, the migration of cloud technology to private data centers has made enterprise-class disaster recovery solutions practical for organizations of virtually any size.
Progent's team of disaster recovery consultants and certified Windows Server experts have the knowledge and experience to help you plan, deploy, test, maintain and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on Windows Server 2016 that aligns with your business goals and IT budget. Progent's information assurance experts can help you prove compliance with regulatory requirements for disaster recovery, and Progent's business continuity consultants can help you integrate your disaster recovery strategy into a broader plan to keep your business operating at an acceptable level in the event of a predictable widespread catastrophe. By showing you practical and affordable ways to deploy Windows Server 2016 to improve your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Progent can help ensure that your investment in current disaster recovery and clustering technology adds maximum business value to your information network.
Windows Server 2016 Storage Replica
The headline disaster recovery feature of Windows Server 2016 is Storage Replica, Microsoft's first foray into zero-data-loss DR. Storage Replica allows you to mirror data between sites located within metro distances by using synchronous replication over a low-latency (5 ms or better round trip) TCP/IP or RDMA network using an SMB3 transport. If a protected site (also called a source or primary site) suffers a complete shutdown, you can switch quickly to the recovery site (also called destination or secondary site) without losing any data written to disk storage. Storage Replica can also be used for disaster avoidance, where users are seamlessly switched over to a recovery site in expectation of an imminent catastrophe such as a flood, wildfire or hurricane. For sites separated by longer distances or otherwise subject to higher latencies, Storage Replica supports an asynchronous replication mode that provides minimal data loss.
Storage Replica uses block-level replication between clusters or servers. This means that protected applications write data to at least two locations before the completion of any write operation. Because Storage Replica operates below the file level, it avoids the restrictions of technologies like DFS Replication, which requires that files be closed before replication and is subject to issues like files locks and open handles. Progent can help you upgrade from low-end disaster recovery solutions like DFS Replication to a zero-data-loss DR solution based on Windows Server 2016 Storage Replica.
For higher latency networks that span longer distances, Storage Replica supports asynchronous replication. Since Storage Replica asynchronous replication is continuous, not checkpoint based, the amount of data at risk of being lost is far lower than DR solutions based on snapshots. In addition, Storage Replica works at the partition layer, so it replicates all Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshots, allowing application-consistent data snapshots for point-in-time recovery.
Topologies supported by Storage Replica include stretch clusters, cluster-to-cluster, and server-to-server. These configurations can run on physical hardware or VMs based on Hyper-V, VMware, Citrix XenServer, or other leading virtualization platforms. Stretch cluster configurations allow you to orchestrate and automate the failover process for workloads like Hyper-V private cloud clusters and SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) and can be managed with Failover Cluster Manager. Storage Replica with stretched clusters can use Storage Spaces, SAN, iSCSI, and RAID through persistent reservation and can be run with two or more nodes.
The cluster-to-cluster configuration utilizes uses two distinct clusters and allows administrators to control the failover process manually. This topology is suited for environments where the secondary site set up solely for disaster recovery rather than as an active data center. With a cluster-to-cluster configuration, Storage Replica supports the cost-saving Storage Spaces feature of Windows Server 2016 and can be run with four or more nodes.
If your hardware does not support clustering, you can run Storage Replica in a server-to-server configuration. In this case the failover process must be performed manually. This can be a cost-effective DR solution between branch offices and data centers, and with asynchronous replication can support significantly better RPO than can be achieved with DFS Replication.
Progent can help you determine which Storage Replica topology makes the most sense for you business and can also help you plan, deploy, manage and troubleshoot your Storage Replica solution. For other zero-data-loss disaster recovery platforms supported by Progent, see VMware Site Recovery Manager consulting and NetApp MetroCluster disaster recovery consulting.
Additional Features of Windows Server 2016 for Failover Clustering
Important new and enhanced features of Windows Server 2016 include:
When you create volumes from the storage pool, Storage Spaces Direct automatically generates a virtual disk and takes care of partitioning, formatting, and adding it to your Failover Cluster so it can be accessed by any node as a CSV. These shared volumes can tolerate drive, server, or component failures with uninterrupted availability, and you can replace failed hardware without downtime or complex management intervention. Performance can exceed 150,000 mixed random IOPS per server thanks to an integrated read/write cache and support for NVMe drives mounted directly on the PCIe bus. Storage Spaces Direct automatically utilizes the fastest storage available, such as SSDs, for its always-on cache.
System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager supports two models for configuring and managing Storage Spaces Direct clusters. In a converged deployment, also called disaggregated, compute and storage resources run on different clusters. This provides administrators with the flexibility to scale compute resources independently from storage and is suitable for enterprises with larger environments and the skills to manage complex deployments. With a hyper-converged deployment model, Hyper-V compute and storage share the same cluster. This model, which minimizes hardware costs and is easier to configure and manage, is appropriate for smaller organizations or branch offices.
Health Service can automate workflows in the disk retirement/replacement cycle by reporting a failed disk, copying data from the retired disk to the remaining disks to restore full resiliency, indicating a failed disk by blinking its disk or slot indicator light, verifying a replacement disk against a Supported Components Document, and substituting the replacement disk into the storage pool previously occupied by the retired disk.
Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade utilizes a new mixed-OS mode that allows nodes with different host operating system versions to run within the same cluster. This allows you to pause, drain, evict, and reformat any node in the cluster, install Windows Server 2016 on the node, and bring the node back online. The Failover Cluster continues operating during this procedure as it would during any node outage. You can then use Failover Cluster Manager or PowerShell to add the upgraded node back into the cluster. All nodes operate at the older Windows Server 2012 R2 functional level until every node in the cluster has been upgraded. When all nodes have been migrated to Windows Server 2016, the entire cluster can be upgraded at once to the new functionality level with a single PowerShell cmdlet.
Progent can guide you through the Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade process following best practices, help you load balance the upgraded cluster, and show you how to take advantage of the new features provided by Windows Server 2016.
Progent's information assurance consultants can help you achieve and prove compliance with regulatory and industry data security requirement such as SOX, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 3.2 and FedRAMP by showing you how to configure the powerful new security tools available with Windows Server 2016 including Windows Containers, Shielded Virtual Machines, Credential Guard, Remote Credential Guard and Just In Time (JIT) Privileged Access Management. (For a description of these security enhancements, see Windows Server 2016 integration consulting.)
Progent's information assurance consultants can help you deploy new security feature like Windows and Hyper-V Containers, Shielded Virtual Machines, Credential Guard, Remote Credential Guard and Just In Time (JIT) Privileged Access Management to make it easier for you to comply with regulatory and industry data security requirement such as SOX, ISO 27001, PCI DSS 3.2, and FedRAMP. Progent's roster of Cisco CCIE-certified network infrastructure consultants is one of the largest of any independent IT services firm in the U.S., and Progent can help you design, deploy and manage a hybrid network ecosystem that fully delivers the high-availability and disaster recovery capabilities of Windows Server 2016. To streamline the management of your Windows Server 2016 Failover Clusters, Progent can provide expertise with PowerShell scripting, Failover Cluster Manager, Hyper-V Manager, System Center 2016 migration, System Center 2016 Operations Manager (SCOM 2016) integration and Virtual Machine Manager 2016 (VVM 2016) hybrid cloud management consulting.
To help you protect critical Microsoft workloads with Windows Server 2016's disaster recovery solutions, Progent offers services that include Exchange 2016 integration consulting, SQL Server 2016 consulting, and SharePoint development and integration. For hybrid environments that use public cloud services, Progent offers Office 365 Exchange Online consulting, Amazon AWS integration, and Google Cloud integration consulting.
Progent's Online Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise
Progent is a pioneer in delivering online consulting and troubleshooting expertise and has provided remote solutions to organizations in every state in the U.S. (See Progent's Customer Testimonials.) Progent also offers onsite consulting services in major metropolitan areas across the United States and parts of Canada. Progent can provide as-needed guidance to help you resolve occasional technical issues or full project management outsourcing or co-sourcing services to make sure your Windows Server 2016 initiative is successfully completed on time and within budget.
If you need immediate online help from a Progent consultant, visit Progent's Online Technical Response Center.
Contact Progent for Windows Server 2016 Expertise
For more information about Progent's consulting and troubleshooting support for Windows Server 2016, call
Fault Tolerant Technologies Provided by Progent's Experts
Progent's Microsoft and Cisco consultants can assist your company to build a cost-effective, fault-tolerant environment that resolves critical challenges covering a broad range of networking technologies and operations such as:
Workplace Recovery Planning
Progent's business continuity planning engineers can show you how to create a business continuity strategy in order to resume network operations in case of an information network disaster. Progent can assist you to create a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy that incorporates periodic disaster recovery evaluations and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified engineers can also help you create an affordable, high-availability system solution that takes into account reliability issues involving a wide array of infrastructure technologies and procedures. To learn more, visit Disaster Recovery Consulting and Support Services.
CRISC-Premier IT Risk Mitigation
The CRISC program was initiated by ISACA to validate a consultant's skills to design, deploy, and support IS control mechanisms to reduce risk. Progent can provide the services of a CRISC-certified consultant to assist you to create and execute a workplace continuity strategy based on industry best practices promoted by CRISC and geared to match your company's risk appetite, business objectives, and IT budget. To find out more, go to CRISC-Premier IT risk mitigation specialists.
Windows Server 2019 High Availability Failover Clustering
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 incorporated significant enhancements in scale, performance, manageability, security and compliance, application compatibility, Linux support, Kubernetes networking, and hybrid integration of local and cloud assets. Top enhancements of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 include Windows Admin Center for centralizing the management of hybrid on-premises/cloud-hosted deployments, System Insights for utilizing advance predictive intelligence to control on-premises environments, Windows Defender ATP Exploit Guard for host-intrusion prevention, container networking using Kubernetes, Cluster Sets technology for building and managing large non-stop scale-out clusters, and Storage Migration Service for simplifying the migration from outdated versions of Windows Server. For more information, see Microsoft Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering Expertise.
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Disaster Recovery Solutions
VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a component of VMware vCenter that lets you specify, automate and verify a consistent process for recovering services rapidly following a breakdown. Site Recovery Manager provides centrally controlled and automated recovery, application mobility, plus non-disruptive site migration, failback and re-protect. Site Recovery Manager also allows transparent testing for disaster recovery, upgrades and fixes and can produce reports to confirm full service recovery, validate SLAs and demonstrate disaster recovery compliance. Progent can provide the support of a VCDX certified VMware SRM consultant to assist your organization to design, deploy, test and manage a disaster recovery solution powered by VMware Site Recovery Manager.
NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Technology
NetApp MetroCluster is a high-availability and disaster recovery platform that combines array-based storage clustering along with synchronous replication to provide rapid, zero data loss disaster recovery between sites that are as far as 300km away from one another. Progent offers online or on-premises access to a NetApp MetroCluster expert who can help you to plan, configure, administer, update, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to choose a topology for your MetroCluster environment that aligns with your technical needs and IT budget. Progent can ensure you follow leading practices for configuring your MetroCluster environment by delivering help with tasks like assigning disk pools, arranging plexes layout, setting up NetApp FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, installing Cisco and Brocade switches, designing a tiebreaker, designing a TCP/IP configuration replication network between your storage clusters, and testing your MetroCluster disaster recovery system to verify adherence with industry standards and government mandates.
High Availability Load Balancing
Progent provides fault tolerant load balancing support covering network load balancing, load balanced applications, LAN/WAN backbone routing, and content dispatching products including Cisco Content Engine. High availability load balancing solutions for which Progent can provide consulting expertise include Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Presentation Server, Cisco Content Services Switch, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and LocalDirector 400 series, and F5 Networks BIG-IP. For details, see High Availability Load Balancing.
Non-stop Internet Data Centers
Progent's Data Center engineers can help you identify fault-tolerant data centers that match the particular needs of your company. High availability colocation sites are particularly attractive to small and mid-size organizations due to of their low cost and convenience compared to taking a do-it-yourself strategy. Trying to build an in-house data center that offers even a basic degree of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for most small organizations. Progent is ready to help you reap all the advantages of high-availability colo centers by providing a complete array of engineering and support services. For more information, visit Non-stop Colocation Consulting.
Non-stop Inter-office Connectivity
Progent's branch office connection professionals can help companies achieve non-stop multi-site connectivity solutions by means of redundant networks featuring transparent failover. Progent's Cisco-premier CCIE engineers can design and deploy high-availability Inter-office connections based on zero-downtime EIGRP routers or fault tolerant OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connections and transparent fail-over offers economical 24x7 interoffice networking. For details, visit Fault Tolerant Inter-office Networking.
Non-stop Internet Connections
Progent's Cisco-authorized network experts can show you how to build an affordable, fault tolerant Internet configuration architecture that can achieve non-stop Internet connectivity through a wide array of fault tolerant Internet access technologies including high availability BGP, automatic fail-over, and redundant Internet Service Providers. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert engineers to show you how to apply the latest techniques for high availability Internet access to build an affordable, completely redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other capabilities to create non-stop Internet access. To find out more, visit Fault Tolerant Internet Access Architecture.
Backup and Restore Solutions Consulting Experts
Progent can provide economical remote access to engineers skilled in a broad range of utilities and services that provide solutions for protecting Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux/UNIX servers and desktops plus laptops and smartphones. Progent offers expertise for all major backup platforms including Acronis Backup and Recovery, Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan, Double-Take, Mozy, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery, and FLARs. Progent can assist your company to implement, upgrade, or maintain backup systems for a range of architectures including local, edge to datacenter, cloud-based, or a mix. For more information, see Backup and Recovery Technology Expertise.
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) Backup and Recovery Consulting Experts
Progent's certified System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) consultants can assist you to develop a practical disaster recovery plan, design a cost-effective fault-tolerante IT architecture, configure a SCDPM-powered recovery solution, comprehensively test your system, educate your administrative personnel or local service providers how to manage Microsoft SCDPM, or provide complete IT support outsourcing including remote hosting of Microsoft SCDPM machines in Progent's data center. To read more, visit Microsoft SCDPM Consulting.
Barracuda Backup Cloud and Offsite Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription backup/restore platform for small and mid-size businesses. A Barracuda Backup deployment can include a purpose-built physical appliance built by Barracuda or a virtual appliance with comparable features but which utilizes your own storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup protects vital company data produced locally, at one or multiple remote sites, or in the cloud. For disaster preparedness, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon AWS, or to any site with a Barracuda appliance. Progent is a certified Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts offer a wide array of consulting services to help your business to design, configure, operate and troubleshoot a BDR solution built on Barracuda Backup. For additional information, see Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting.
ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup Solutions for Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software provides small organizations a dependable and affordable solution for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be used for local, offsite, multi-site, and cloud-hosted architectures and also supports cost-effective cloud backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Altaro VM Backup supports high-end capabilities like Immutable Cloud Storage for an extra layer of protection from ransomware. Progent is a Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a broad array of remote or on-premises consulting services to assist you to design, deploy, optimize and troubleshoot a modern backup/restore solution powered by Altaro VM Backup. With ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, Progent offers a fully managed backup/restore service based on Altaro VM Backup technology. To find out more, see Altaro VM Backup consulting.
ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup Services for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 provides rudimentary archiving but does not include native support for key data protection services like Exchange Online backups or greater than 30-day point-in-time data recovery for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup provides a full-featured BDR solution for programmable backup and quick recovery of all your company's M365 mail, Microsoft Teams Chats, SharePoint documents, OneDrive data, and content on Windows desktops and laptops. Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity/Altaro partner and offers ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup to provide end-to-end management services for Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup suite. ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup delivers a budget-friendly backup-as-a-service alternative that guards M365 components against data loss or corruption resulting from human or system error, malicious corruption, and malware assaults such as ransomware. To find out more, visit ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup solutions for Microsoft 365.
Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO
ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO provide small and mid-sized organizations an affordable end-to-end service for secure backup/disaster recovery. Available at a low monthly rate, ProSight DPS ECHO automates and monitors your backup processes and enable fast restoration of vital data, apps and virtual machines that have become unavailable or damaged due to component breakdowns, software glitches, disasters, human mistakes, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO can help you back up, recover and restore files, folders, apps, system images, as well as Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Important data can be backed up on the cloud, to an on-promises storage device, or mirrored to both. Progent's cloud backup specialists can provide advanced support to configure ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO to be compliant with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, FINRA, and PCI and, whenever necessary, can assist you to restore your critical data. Find out more about ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO managed backup and recovery.
ProSight DPS 360 Backup Solutions
Progent can assist your company to design, implement and troubleshoot a backup/restore plan built around MSP360 software. MSP360 enables file or image backup/recovery for VMs and physical computers, supports all leading public clouds, and permits businesses to build a backup solution with a minimum Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and a granular RPO. With ProSight DPS 360 Backup, Progent offers end-to-end monitoring and management of your backup system to protect against data loss resulting from human mistakes, system errors, malicious users, and external assaults like ransomware. To read more, go to ProSight DPS 360 Backup solutions.
Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup/Restore
Double-Take publishes a family of tools designed to provide small and midsize companies a range of affordable solutions for replicating and recovering business-critical applications such as Exchange, SQL Server, RIM Blackberry, and SharePoint. Progent's disaster recovery planning experts have in-depth experience integrating Double-Take Software technology into small company information systems to create an advanced state of availability and disaster recovery capability at a budget-friendly price. To find out more, go to Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup.
Why Choose Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning?
Since Progent is a Microsoft Partner and offers high-level application support for a wide variety of small business applications, Progent can assist clients to find efficient IT solutions that substantially enhance the business value of your IT network. As a Registered Partner for Cisco, Progent offers the expertise of certified consultants and specialists with experience in designing, implementing and maintaining networking solutions based on Cisco products. The broad scope of Progent's technical experience and Progent's familiarity with the requirements of small businesses make Progent the perfect resource for building and maintaining a cost-effective, high-availability network.