VERITAS Software brings its flagship Unix high-availability product to Microsoft Windows NT

VERITAS Software has announced VERITAS Cluster Server (VCS) for NT, expanding platform support for the company`s flagship high availability management product. Enabling customers with Windows NT-based applications to create high-availability clusters of two to 32 servers, VERITAS Cluster Server delivers the additional scalability and flexibility necessary to extend the rapidly growing Windows NT Server environment to mission-critical levels of availability. VERITAS Cluster Server for NT benefits customers with large Windows NT server farms, SANs used for consolidating Windows NT storage, and e-Business application environments using both UNIX and Windows NT servers.

"Many of our customers rely upon Windows NT-based environments for their business- and mission-critical applications," says Dan Kuznetsky, program director, International Data Corporation. "As VERITAS Software delivers integrated clustering and storage management products to the Windows NT market, we believe the company will provide the kind of robust high-availability solutions customers need to protect their next wave of e-Commerce applications."

Windows NT servers are increasingly being deployed in data centres for e-mail, Web serving, file/print and database applications. The shift to a Web-enabled e-Business model for IT is increasing the required level of availability of these applications to mission-critical levels. Application downtime equates to more than just lost productivity; downtime renders lost revenue opportunity and reduces customer loyalty.

The scalability and policy-based fail-over capabilities of VCS make it possible to efficiently manage the availability of mission-critical applications in large NT server farms at much lower hardware costs than traditional, less-scalable products.

"By delivering a proven application availability management solution specifically tuned for the Windows NT marketplace, we`re providing our customers with tools to manage the explosive growth of NT-based environments and a single interface to manage the heterogeneous clusters we see today," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional manager, Middle East and Africa at VERITAS Software.

The new product now brings the same high availability capabilities to Windows NT servers in the data centre that VERITAS Software has successfully deployed on Sun Solaris for more than five years. Supporting 32 servers in a single cluster and monitoring up to 256 clusters from a single console, VERITAS Cluster Server for NT can manage availability of large single function server farms for applications such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.

Customers deploying SANs to share consolidated storage between many servers can now use VERITAS Cluster Server for NT to quickly fail-over mission critical Microsoft SQL databases from one server to another, while logically re-mapping SAN attached storage to the new server. This capability allows customers to create large clusters without the expense of duplicating disks behind every server. Within mixed UNIX/NT server environments typical of e-Business infrastructures, VERITAS Cluster Server can also be used to manage high availability of Solaris, HP/UX and Windows/NT clusters from a single console, reducing training costs and simplifying administration.