VERITAS cluster server over SAN reduces cost of managing rapid growth of e-business application services

VERITAS Software has announced its VERITAS Cluster Server enables eBusiness application services over a storage area network (SAN). VERITAS Cluster Server, an architecture-independent management solution designed to proactively administer service groups (application services), now delivers the technology to reduce the cost of maintaining highly available applications in a heterogeneous SAN environment. Scaling to support a large number of application servers and multiple Operating Systems, VERITAS Cluster server enables application availability for SAN-based shared storage configurations.

Implementing a SAN can allow server farms to share access to a storage farm. "Using VERITAS Cluster Server, applications can be transferred to different servers while still accessing the same pools of stored data on a storage network. This sharing process eliminates the need to create multiple copies of storage, thus reducing costs often associated with maintaining availability in traditional one-to-one storage architectures," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional manager, Middle East and Africa at VERITAS Software SA.

Configuring SANs Using VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS Cluster Server VERITAS Cluster Server can be implemented in SAN configurations in one of two ways:

• Utilising VERITAS Cluster Server with VERITAS Volume Manager. Using the disk group ownership capabilities of VERITAS Volume Manager in conjunction with VERITAS Cluster Server, all servers are capable of identifying storage on the SAN, limiting access allocated to each. Tight integration with VERITAS Volume Manager allows VERITAS Cluster Server to quickly re-map the failed servers` storage to the new server.

• Implementing VERITAS Cluster Server with Hardware RAID Vendors. VERITAS Software works with hardware RAID vendors to implement vendor-specific zoning capabilities. These value-add agents developed with VERITAS Software also allow mapping of servers across multiple paths to specific storage.

Additionally, VERITAS Cluster Server features a scalable Java-based graphical user interface that provides centralised management in complex SAN environments from a single console.