Marathon Computer FTvirtual Server Trend Toward Blades, Flexibility and Ease of Installation

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This chapter discusses the key advantages of IBM BladeCenter and Mara- thon Technologies FTvirtual Server and how they combine to create a truly fault-tolerant environment for mission critical Windows applications.

Fault-Tolerant Computing for Mission Critical Windows Applications

The Trend Toward Blades

Blade configurations like the IBM BladeCenter have become popular because they provide several key advantages over conventional pedestal or rack-mounted servers. These advantages include:

•Flexibility and Ease of Installation

Because blades get their electrical power and network interconnections from the chassis, adding processing power to an existing chassis is as simple as inserting the blade and configuring its software and network address. No additional cabling or electrical power connections are required.

•Ease of Management

System management tools like the IBM Director permit hundreds of blade servers to be maintained remotely through use of a single graphi- cal console. This tool provides a common management view across multiple servers in a chassis and enables a smaller IT staff to manage the same number of servers.

Marathon Technologies Corporation 1