Compaq

 

Reliability: The Ultimate Mission-Critical Mandate
(Continued)

 

Leading system
D.H. Brown Associates Inc., a market research firm in Port Chester, NY, conducts an in-depth analysis of Unix server availability every year. This year, Compaq's servers topped a list of six systems, including those from Data General, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and IBM (for both its Unix lines, the RS/6000 and Sequent).

Compaq's new Wildfire AlphaServer GS Series line of 64- bit processors -- which supports Compaq's Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS operating systems as well as Linux -- adds a potpourri of features that advance system reliability even more. For instance, the GS Wildfire systems let administrators change key internal parameters without needing to reboot the system. Just as importantly, the GS systems Wildfire eases clustering, configuration, and administration tasks, allowing administrators to spend as little time as possible moving their servers on and off-line.
"It's obvious that Compaq placed a great deal of emphasis on improving its availability features with its new GS systemsWildfire systems," says Howard Harvey Hindin, a vice president with D.H Brown's high availability and clustering service.

Many of these changes involve "routine" maintenance, though analysts say maintenance is no longer routine in the new business realities of a 24x7 world. "In a worldwide economy, we never close," says FactSet's Zorn. That's a lesson that many e-businesses are just starting to appreciate.

The new Compaq AlphaServer GS Series systems Wildfire servers are designed to meet these new availability demands, permitting users to add CPU, processing power, and memory on the fly.

The list of AlphaServer GS Wildfire features that enhance availability is are long and varied. The system supports multiple power supplies in case a company encounters a power disruption. Each system has the ability to automatically restart whenever there is a system failure. If the problem is caused by a hardware failure, the server automatically bypasses the failed component, continues to bring up the remainder of the system, moves affected applications to another processor, and notifies an the operator of the problem and its's source.

Clustering has emerged as a popular technique to address insure system availability. A cluster is a group of systems linked by a high-speed interconnect that enables the systems to function together at various levels. as a single resource. While Historically, clustering has been viewed as difficult to implement on some systems because applications applications had to be divided among a series of systems. this is not true on Compaq systems. Nonetheless, Compaq technology has long been noted as a leader in this area. Compaq OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix provide the user with a single integrated view of the systems in the cluster, making it appear as a single system. This greatly simplifies and reduces the operations and support requirements involved.. Compaq technology has long been noted as a leader in this area providing users with the highest levels of availability, the most functionality, the simpliestsimplest to use, and the lowest cost of ownership of any vendor.

"The clustering capabilities of Compaq OpenVMS give us the ability to add capacity, add nodes in live, and add in I/O," FactSet's Zorn says. "The 24 x 7 availability of OpenVMS Cluster systems means the data and applications are always available."

There is no dearth of companies that can attest to the high availability benefits of using Compaq cluster technology clusters. Genetech, a San Francisco biotechnology company, has been running three Compaq A alphaSservers clusters to support complex scientific and engineering applications for up to 218 days without a crash. Because of the Internet, all business users are finding they need the same level of high availability and performance that was once restricted to only the most demanding financial and scientific purposes.

No wonder D.H. Brown, the market research firm, expects a quarter of all Unix systems shipped during the next three years to include clustering features. The new AlphaServer GS Wildfire servers boost Compaq's clustering capabilities dramatically -- and not a second too soon in the eyes of business users.

Consider Federal TransTel Inc. (FTT), which handles billing and related financial services for service providers in the telcom, Internet, and enhanced telephony industries. FTT offers turnkey billing services, handling all aspects of the back office so customers can concentrate on their core businesses.

“We are processing data for clients 24x7 so if a machine went down that would create quite a bit of backlog," says Ken Grammer, manager of systems support for FTT in Birmingham, Alabama . "It's crucial that the server and database be available for our front-end call center to be able to access our client's user records. If call center representatives are sitting there not able to do their jobs, it's like the company is burning money." (next)

 

1 2 3 4 5

 

Go Back to Samples