Symantec Introducing Veritas Cluster Server One

Symantec Corp. introduced Veritas Cluster Server One (VCS One), a new high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) platform for next-generation data centers. VCS One moves beyond traditional clustering, enabling IT managers to implement advanced services including active/active DR, multi-tier business application HA and scale-out control — increasing uptime and decreasing capital (CAPEX) and operational costs (OPEX) for the business.

Traditional clustering solutions can be complex to deploy and manage for individual databases and applications. Yet next-generation data centers, with their need for virtualized, scalable and distributed environments, strain these traditional solutions past the breaking point. Next-generation data centers are leveraging server virtualization to create thousands of servers, demanding a massive increase in scalability. In addition, traditional clustering solutions complicate or even prevent the use of valuable virtualization features like live migration. Finally, maintaining only the availability of traditional back-end services such as databases is not enough. Instead, organizations require the availability of end-to-end business applications built on highly distributed, multi-tier application architectures.

Veritas Cluster Server One delivers a new, unique HA/DR architecture that not only directly addresses these issues, but also dramatically simplifies the deployment and ongoing management of HA/DR services. The VCS One architecture is client-server based and highly scalable, initially supporting up to 256 nodes per cluster. It is non-intrusive and outside the operating system kernel — facilitating deployment and upgrades. VCS One also has a simpler networking model and built-in resiliency against configuration changes that impact availability. VCS One is policy-driven, with priorities, scheduling and dependency management to automate tasks and increase operator efficiency. Finally, Veritas Cluster Server One has server virtualization abstraction and control to deliver a common HA/DR operating model across the various virtual platforms in an enterprise data center.

Veritas Cluster Server One provides high availability and disaster recovery for the next-generation data center with: One platform for virtual and physical environments; One platform for multi-tier and monolithic applications; and One platform for scale-out and scale-up control. VCS One is unique in its ability to deliver the following capabilities:

• Active/Active DR — Most DR sites dedicate spare, idle capacity to handle production site failure. VCS One combines its unique virtualization control with policies for application priority to minimize CAPEX by fully leveraging all available equipment at the DR site. VCS One ensures that the highest priority workloads remain available regardless of the outage scenario. Multi-Tier HA — The majority of business application downtime involves people and processes to coordinate end-to-end restarts, even after back-end databases are made highly available with traditional clustering solutions. VCS One policies for application dependencies minimize total downtime by coordinating restart relationships between distributed application components running on various operating systems and across physical and virtual platforms.
• Scale-Out Control — Typical data centers contain hundreds, even thousands, of applications across production, test and development, and edge tier, all routinely requiring start, stop and restart operations. VCS One minimizes OPEX and resolution time by enabling front-line operators to quickly and easily handle these tasks, error-free, without requiring assistance from backline operations or systems administration. VCS One fully exploits live migration in virtualized environments to eliminate downtime where possible.

"Clustering applications for high availability was difficult enough before server virtualization came along, creating a new layer of complexity and increasing the need for clustering flexibility and scale," said Robert Ball, Director of Solutions & Services, ServerWare Corp. "Solutions like VCS One deliver what we need right now, which is a new HA/DR architecture that is not only built for virtual environments, but that also fundamentally simplifies the way HA/DR is deployed and managed."

"Getting scalable control of a rapidly expanding number of end-to-end applications, running on physical servers and virtual servers, is a major challenge for customers, one which is often solved with a combination of people and manual processes," said Jean S. Bozman, Research Vice President, IDC Enterprise Platforms Group. "Solutions like VCS One enable customers to achieve high levels of operational efficiency through automation of routine tasks involving starting, stopping, moving and restarting applications — an approach that can significantly reduce OPEX by reducing downtime and IT staff time."

"Business and regulatory drivers mean that disaster recovery is no longer optional for many organizations. Unfortunately, traditional clustering solutions typically require double the capital costs in order to have spare capacity at the DR site," said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Symantec’s Storage and Availability Management Group. "VCS One leverages server virtualization and priority-based policies to deliver active/active DR instead of active/passive DR, dramatically reducing hardware CAPEX while providing customers with confidence that they will meet RTOs for mission critical applications."

Did you know that when virtualization is used to consolidate servers, it saves energy? Veritas Cluster Server One helps organizations embrace virtualization more easily and gives them the ability to consolidate servers further with priority-based high availability. VCS One can schedule the starting and stopping of applications, so that when applications are not in use, they can be shut down to reduce energy consumption. Symantec is helping organizations to implement a Green IT strategy.

According to research conducted by Symantec in 2008, virtualization is the major factor causing 55 percent of organizations to reevaluate their DR plans. Globally, 35 percent of respondents cited too many different tools as the biggest challenge in protecting mission-critical data and applications within physical and virtual environments.

Pricing and Availability
Veritas Cluster Server One is now generally available with estimated pricing starting at $995 per CPU.