VERITAS Software has announced complementary clustering solutions that enable fewer administrators to effectively manage higher levels of availability across mixed hardware or software platforms.
To deliver a high-quality user experience, IT staff must manage data and application availability levels across multiple layers of the data centre or even across multiple sites, tasks previously considered by many organisations to be too expensive or complex to install and manage.
"We are breaking down those barriers with the introduction of VERITAS Global Cluster Manager 1.1, which enables customers to simplify availability management tasks across the globe from a single console.
VERITAS Cluster Server QuickStart provides a two-node version of our clustering solution," says Nick van Noordwyk, regional director, Middle East and Africa at VERITAS Software.
"We see more and more organisations discovering the need to manage availability levels from a holistic perspective," says Donna Scott, vice president and research director, Gartner. "In reality, everything from the user interaction or transaction layer down to the storage area network functions as a single entity from the user`s perspective. A disruption in any of those areas could directly impact a user`s ability to access the information or services they need. Equipping IT staff with a mechanism for managing end-to-end availability will be crucial to their ability to support service level agreements and generally keep their customers happy in today`s fast-paced, Internet-based business environment."
Building on its ability to perform worldwide application fail over between VERITAS Cluster Server clusters in Solaris, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft Windows environments, the new product now allows customers to manage VERITAS Cluster Server, VERITAS Cluster Server QuickStart, VERITAS Cluster Server Traffic Director and VERITAS Volume Replicator configurations. This is done in detail through a central console. The company has also revealed plans for VERITAS Global Cluster Manager to support management of VERITAS SANPoint Control, allowing customers to consolidate SAN-management tasks as well.
Unifying both data and application availability management into a centralised console not only increases the server-to-administrator ratio, but also provides IT staff with an independent software platform, from which they can remedy issues which might affect availability levels regardless of geographic location, operating system, or hardware.
VERITAS Software is also expanding the options available to customers who require higher levels of application availability in remote offices or for specific applications where high availability may have been seen as too expensive, complex to install, or difficult to manage. Founded on the same core engine as the industry-leading VERITAS Cluster Server, VERITAS Cluster Server QuickStart provides wizard-driven installation, configuration and management, resulting in simplified cluster management for two-node clusters. VERITAS Cluster Server QuickStart can be managed remotely from VERITAS Global Cluster Manager 1.1, and should the need arise, customers may upgrade to the full VERITAS Cluster Server solution through a simple licence key change.
"Managing mixed computing environments is a fact of life for most organisations, and attempting to meet their customer`s availability expectations using hardware-specific or proprietary tools makes that task virtually impossible," says Van Noordwyk.
"VERITAS` platform-independent approach allows IT staff to manage availability levels from servers all the way to storage pools, and provides data centre teams with a strategic software platform they can utilise over virtually any hardware."
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