Data is the lifeblood of the supply chain. It doesn’t matter whether you’re moving bits, bins or boxcars. Where those boxcars are, when they need to be somewhere else, who is facilitating each transfer: That’s all data, and if it suddenly becomes unavailable because critical business applications or databases have gone offline, the complications and the costs can add up quickly.

How best, then, to guarantee that you retain access to your critical applications and data? There are products designed to ensure high availability (HA), meaning that you’re guaranteed to have access to your applications and data at least 99.99% of the time. They’re bundled with certain flavors of Linux open-source operating systems. There are also third-party HA alternatives, including those that are operating system-agnostic. The core products bundled with open source-based HA applications may seem attractive to procurement agents, because a software license can be procured without paying additional fees. However, they may also get what they pay for – as well as more than they bargained for.

Open source-based HA software can be challenging to configure, and may require a significant commitment of an organization’s IT resources, including time spent testing the system to ensure that it works, a task that can pose challenges of its own and that will need to be repeated regularly as part of routine system maintenance. 

Failing to invest the time required to perform those tasks properly is inadvisable, given that open source-based HA applications are more likely to fail if improperly configured, inadequately tested, or inconsistently maintained. A tool that’s not tied to an individual operating system and is purpose­-built to deliver HA is often more easily configured, tested, and maintained. And it may more reliably ensure HA in the event of a system or software failure for those reasons. When all the costs are compared, the HA application not bundled with the operating system can actually deliver a lower total cost of ownership over time. 

Beyond the Cost of Licensing

If the question for procurement boils down to cost, it’s important to consider more than the cost of the licensing the product ensuring HA. The cost of one that’s bundled with an operating system may be negligible, but the solution won’t be free. You’ll still have to pay for the support associated with that HA application. Even though you’ll have to pay for both a software license and support if you deploy OS-agnostic HA software, that may be a more cost-efficient approach when you consider the cost of downtime. Ask yourself: What’s the cost to your organization if you can’t access critical applications and data – for a minute, an hour, a day? How much of your IT labor costs will be tied up in maintaining and managing an HA application that requires specialized skills? Do you even have the in-house skills needed to create, deploy, troubleshoot, and version-control the custom scripts required for these systems?

Another factor to consider is whether your organization has critical applications running on more than one OS. IT teams can save tens of thousands of dollars by using HA software that delivers the same user experience when protecting Windows and leading Linux distributions. An application that supports both environments enables IT teams to learn one system and one process for maintaining HA – eliminating a costly source of complexity. If your organization is eyeing any potential mergers or acquisitions, this consideration takes on even more importance, as you may soon have new systems and applications that require HA. How easily you’ll be able to incorporate them into your infrastructure may depend heavily on the choices you make in deploying HA.

Complexity and the Risk of Failure

While all HA applications are supposed to ensure access to critical applications and data virtually uninterruptedly, not all HA options make it easy to ensure that outcome. Some operating system-based applications are heavily dependent on the environment remaining static, and offer no way to accommodate reasonable system changes without reconfiguration. Others depend on precise user input or on parameter files. If those files contain a typo or if a parameter isn’t explicit, failover may not occur. Instead of a momentary pause during failover, users and customers may encounter a period of unplanned downtime that stretches into hours. P personnel may be idled, supply chain schedules may be disrupted, transfers might not occur on time, and you could rack up performance penalties for missed milestones. Those are costs one must consider when weighing the true price of an HA application.

Are OS-agnostic HA applications immune to unexpected failures? No, but the providers building them have a much greater business interest in ensuring that their products work as described. These vendors are focused on reducing the complexity intrinsic to HA. Instead of requiring the creation of a complex failover script, for example, some OS-agnostic HA providers have invested in application intelligence that simplifies and troubleshoots solution configuration, dramatically reducing the likelihood of human configuration error. Moreover, these applications may provide point-and-click switchover or switchback features that enable you to see exactly how the systems configured for HA will respond in the event of an emergency. Failover testing (and restoration) is much more difficult to do when using the HA tools typically bundled with an open-source operating system — which is one reason scripting errors can remain undetected until a failover fails.

Ultimately, the question of cost and HA involves many factors. What’s the potential cost of downtime if a “free” HA application fails at a critical moment? What value do you place on your IT team’s ability to speak to a human support agent — compared to browsing a perhaps poorly maintained online knowledge base — when it has critical configuration or application management questions? 

Indeed, there are some who feel that merely having an IT team makes paying for purpose-built HA software unjustifiable — even if it reduces IT involvement and facilitates HA maintenance and management. The logic behind this position is that the company is already paying the IT team to maintain the applications and databases, so why pay more for an HA option when they can get it for free with their OS? But saving the cost of software licenses might mean paying significantly higher IT labor costs or taxing IT resources so they’re unable to work on projects that are more strategic for the company. Is saving the cost of a software license worth the cost of burdening your IT team with a need to manage patches, fixes, and new features as the “free” application expands or continues through the lifecycle? If downtime is going to be highly disruptive to the supply chain you’re managing (or to the reputation for reliability that you’ve spent years building), investing in the technical equivalent of an emergency medical technician that can respond immediately becomes eminently justifiable.

Cassius Rhue is vice president, customer experience with SIOS Technology.