Marathon Computer manual Marathon FTvirtual Server Fault-Tolerance Through Software, Conclusion

Marathon FTvirtual Server - Fault-Tolerance Through Software

To address the need for continuous availability of mission-critical applica- tions, Marathon Technologies has designed its FTvirtual Server software to work with blade server configurations as well as traditional servers.

Marathon software harnesses the redundancy provided by two BladeCenter servers to create a true, fault- tolerant environment for Windows applica- tions.This is accomplished by loading the Marathon software on any two blade servers and interconnecting them via the BladeCenter’s integrated chassis switching matrix. The Marathon software synchronizes the two servers and creates a virtual application environment that runs on both servers simultaneously. If either server in the connected pair fails, the appli- cation environment continues to function uninterrupted, using the process- ing power of the other. Unlike typical clustering technologies which require seconds or even minutes to “fail-over” application processing and may incure data loss, there is no failover with Marathon software, so there is no downtime.

The result is a truely fault-tolerant Windows environment for BladeCenter configurations. Enterprises get all the cost savings and operational efficien- cies of the BladeCenter while protecting their business-critical Windows applications and data, even in the event of a blade failure.

Conclusion

Blade servers are helping companies save money and increase efficiency and flexibility in their data centers. However, without adequate fault protec- tion, these benefits are soon lost in the event of downtime. Marathon’s FTvirtual Server software delivers a simple, affordable way to protect impor- tant applications and data running on IBM eServer BladeCenter configura- tions.

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