What happens if your managed file transfer (MFT) software goes down? With file transfers at the heart of business operations, the impact is significant. To this end, high availability is critical for MFT software — including as updates are performed.
MFT software updates are a must to maintain the highest level of security and functionality. Yet, these updates can often come at the expense of disruptions to critical business activities. The question becomes how to update your MFT environment without impacting service or losing visibility.
Axway’s new Zero Downtime Update capabilities make this possible. As we highlighted at Axway Summit, these capabilities promise to help businesses keep their operations alive and efficient amid MFT updates.
Understanding zero downtime updates
Zero downtime updates (or ZDU) refer to a software deployment process where updates or changes are made to a system without causing any interruption or downtime in its availability or functionality.
This ensures that the system remains accessible and operational for users throughout the update process. It can be achieved by implementing strategies such as rolling updates, blue-green deployments, canary releases, or using load balancers to redirect traffic during the update.
The goal of zero downtime updates is to minimize disruptions and provide a seamless experience for users while maintaining the system’s reliability and performance.
Why zero downtime updates are a must
Managed file transfer is a large revenue driver for businesses. Any disruptions to digital collaboration and workflows with partners, suppliers, and customers affect this revenue stream. Zero downtime updates preserve financial flows.
Zero downtime updates are also a matter of user satisfaction and trust. Data exchange disruptions can leave users frustrated and apprehensive or impact your business partner relationships. Ensuring continuous availability and reliability during an MFT software update helps to minimize any inconveniences for consumers of your service and instill confidence in the provider.
Security is another variable that should never be sacrificed. To effectively reduce risk and stay compliant, security updates must be consumable. An uninterrupted flow of operations minimizes exposure to potential data breaches while ensuring adherence to the latest security standards.
Critical capabilities for zero downtime updates
One of the essential needs for zero downtime MFT updates is a scalable infrastructure. While performing an update, you want the capacity to handle the load so there aren’t any interruptions.
Businesses also need to preserve complete visibility throughout the update process. This includes a holistic view of the configuration, whereabouts of the files, and the ability to make sure that updates are working correctly before they enter production.
Sometimes, you may need to roll back updates if issues are discovered. There also needs to be a promise of zero downtime in these scenarios.
How do zero downtime updates work with Axway MFT?
The ZDU architecture requires an enterprise cluster deployment with at least two nodes. It includes an external load balancer and split databases to achieve zero downtime.
The ZDU process is scheduled during times with less traffic to further prevent disruptions. Most of the work has been done through product enhancements, with little infrastructure or manual intervention needed to support the process.
Here is a high-level step-by-step of how the process works.
- Start by cloning the configuration database, which includes accounts, flows, and other setup information that needs to be available during the update.
- Gracefully shut down a pair of nodes (coupled as backend + edge), draining out the connections towards that pair and stopping the load balancer from forwarding new traffic to them.
- Switch the configuration of the stopped nodes to point to the green database and detach them from the original cluster, creating two separate clusters.
- Perform the necessary updates on the green nodes, which might include any database updates.
- Once the updates are complete, start the nodes in the green cluster.
- With the green cluster accessing the shared database, the traffic is split between the green and blue clusters.
- Repeat the above steps two more times until all nodes are pointing to the green database and are on the updated version.
- Finally, remove the blue database and your updated version is running on what is now the green database.
For a more in-depth illustration of how ZDU works with Axway MFT, check out the recording from our Summit session where I walked attendees through the process.
Axway’s ZDU capabilities check all the right boxes
As an MFT solution provider, we know the importance of updating systems to help Axway customers get the most out of their service. But these updates shouldn’t come at the cost of disrupting critical business operations.
Thanks to our new Zero Downtime Updates capabilities — included as part of the Axway SecureTransport solution — updates don’t have to have this effect.
Soon-to-be available via your own managed deployments or our MFT cloud service, our ZDU capabilities allow for seamless MFT software updates without downtime. Axway customers get the best of all worlds. You’ll reduce your exposure to vulnerabilities, prevent revenue loss, innovate faster, and make better use of your time.
Learn more about how our ZDU capabilities prevent high-value file transfers from reaching a standstill.