NEWS BRIEFS
Santa Clara, CALIF. — Sun Microsystems announced Sun Cluster 3.0, one of the industry’s most advanced clustering platforms for the service-driven network. Designed as an extension to the Solaris 8 Operating Environment, Sun Cluster 3.0 takes clustering to a new level for network-based applications including mail, web and database applications, by combining a unique application service management capability with the availability levels traditionally provided by clustering software.
Featuring several industry firsts, the new software provides the industry’s first clustered file service for standard Unix platforms enabling assured application service levels and service level management capabilities, as well as continuous access to data and the network. In addition, it simplifies administration and lowers costs of ownership by automating application and service creation, as well as many operational tasks.
“The new challenge for our customers is to simplify the operation of their system infrastructure. They are finding themselves spending too much time running their servers and not enough time managing the services or applications they provide,” said Anil Gadre, Sun’s vice president and general manager, Solaris Software. “The ability of Sun Cluster 3.0 to automate and simplify service management tasks will redefine the way dot-com companies use clustering technology and allow the Solaris Operating Environment to increase its lead as the choice for the service-driven network.”
“Our clients depend on Digex to provide the non-stop managed computing environment that keeps their e-businesses running,” said Charles Boyle, director of research and development for Digex, Incorporated, a leading high-end managed Web and application hosting service provider for businesses worldwide. “Through our close strategic technology partnership with Sun Microsystems, we are integrating Sun Cluster 3.0 into our managed platform to provide our customers highest levels of availability on the Internet.”
Sun Cluster 3.0 represents a revolutionary new approach to clustering from Sun. With 40 new patents issued or pending, it offers new approaches to managing application services and makes the complexity of clustering easier. Among the innovations within Sun Cluster 3.0 are the following:
Designed for the Internet
— The first clustered file service for file systems that conform to Unix standards to provide “always on” data availability
— Cluster-wide networking service that enables an “always on” cluster-wide network connection
— The only clustering software specifically designed to support horizontal and vertical scaling
Advanced Manageability
— Simple mechanism to rapidly deploy and manage changes to application services and resources
— Scalable services that allow an application to be installed once and run everywhere on the cluster
— Support for application service failover and scalable service recovery
— Rapid failure detection to shorten recovery time
— Highly accurate failure detection to avoid unnecessary failover
Simplifying
— A cluster-wide device system that simplifies addition of storage peripherals to the cluster
— A suite of popular cluster agents from Sun
— Tools to easily define new cluster agents
— Cluster-wide administration to simplify administration
— Powerful tools to simplify the installation and operation of the cluster
Through automatic fault detection, recovery and redundancy, Sun Cluster 3.0, with the ability to cluster up to 8 nodes and scale up to 512 processors, ensures that mission-critical applications and services remain continuously available. Leveraging the industry-leading Solaris Operating Environment, Sun Cluster provides enterprise-wide reliability, availability, and scalability for e-commerce, ERP, data warehousing, and other mission-critical applications and services.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision – “The Network Is The Computer” – has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $17.6 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com .
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