NEC Offers End-to-End Business Continuity Suite

NEC Corporation of America announced a complete end-to-end business continuity suite for the ultimate in software disaster recovery and hardware continuous availability protection.

NEC provides a business continuity product solution that can deliver virtually continuous uptime through its non-stop hardware, the NEC Fault Tolerant Express5800/300, combined with its data mirroring synchronization cluster software, NEC ExpressCluster. FT servers combined with ExpressCluster over a wide area network (WAN) protect against business disruption due to system outages caused by virtually any kind of unplanned or planned event while delivering application uptime at a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

"In our most recent server study, 51 percent of server professionals reported that the demand for hardware-supported fault tolerance was very or extremely strong. However, most of these professionals also indicated that users’ appreciation for the complexity and expense of providing such non-stop systems was very low," said Bob Gill, managing director of servers research and advisory services at TheInfoPro. "To meet the increasing demand for high availability, most hope to deploy a range of complementary solutions, such as those found in NEC’s FT Express5800/300 series, which range from application fault tolerance to mirroring, clustering, virtualization, and finally, hardware fault tolerance."

Hardware Failure Protection
with Lower TCO than Software Clusters
NEC’s sixth-generation FT Express5800/300 servers are an affordable solution to deliver redundant lockstep processing using the latest Intel Xeon CPU technology. With fully redundant hot-swappable server modules running in lockstep, NEC’s FT servers can keep running the applications, even if hardware in the primary server module fails for any reason. This allows organizations of any size to realize significantly higher levels of availability and system integrity as compared to standard servers, with the added benefit of operational simplicity.

Key features include:

• Continuous Operation with up to 99.999 percent continuous availability, which is an average of about five minutes of potential downtime per year on average.
• Maximum Intel Xeon Processor Performance with lockstep management and fault detection handled separately by the NEC GeminiEngine’ chipset. All cores of the processor become available to deliver significantly faster performance than alternative fault tolerant software solutions.
• Operational Simplicity with redundancy implemented at the hardware level which means only one operating system, one software application, one IP address and one MAC address even though the applications run on two complete server modules.
• Lower TCO than software clusters or alternative fault tolerant software solutions due to the fact that the FT is a turnkey solution requiring one operating system and one application software license, and doesn’t require clustering services or administrative resources for upgrades and annual maintenance fees.
• Non-Stop Software Maintenance through NEC’s Active Upgrade’, a capability that eliminates the need to disrupt server operations to conduct essential software maintenance.
• No-Cost Warranty Repairs through NEC’s warranty program, which replaces the entire server module with a simple hot-swap server module replacement and doesn’t require costly restoration services and other expenses commonly experienced with software cluster re-sets or annual testing.

Software Clustering for Disaster Recovery
Completes NEC’s Business Continuity Suite
NEC’s software cluster solution, ExpressCluster, provides high availability application clustering, including the option of clustering over a WAN, to complete NEC’s suite of business continuity products. ExpressCluster offers fast recovery and protection of critical applications and data over a WAN with recovery in minutes through its synchronized data mirroring capabilities.

Key features include:

• Comprehensive Protection for many popular packaged applications and associated data.
• Automatic Failure Detection and Recovery within minutes instead of hours.
• Flexible Data Mirroring for real-time critical transaction, data and application protection.
• Simplified Updates and Maintenance with easy-to-perform hardware or software updates while the system is running.

Phil Lucas, director for Mifflin County Office of Public Safety said: "NEC completely understood the mission-critical nature of our solution and made sure from beginning to final checks that our system would be bulletproof."

Lycoming County Department of Public Safety runs the Logistic Systems, Inc. NorthStar Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) System on NEC’s FT server for a state-of-the-art, automated 911 response solution. Lycoming County’s IT department considered several vendors before choosing NEC. Connie Turner, deputy director, Lycoming County Department of Public Safety noted: "After we really got into the nuts and bolts of it, we decided that NEC was the best choice."

Charlie Stortz, vice president of Logistic Systems, Inc. (LogiSYS) said:" NEC’s solution excels over everything else out there. Dollar per feature, there was nothing that could touch the NEC fault tolerant server. And, if you look at long-term costs, not just the initial outlay of the investment for the server but also the ongoing maintenance of the system, NEC is highly available and very cost effective."

Craig Dollar, founder and CEO of Emergency CallWorx stated "Our decades of experience have proven to us that redundancy through clustering and other non-fault tolerant methods were neither sufficient enough, nor practical to maintain for the small, rural Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP). With a partner like NEC, we are able to realize our vision of providing a seamless, easy-to-use NG9-1-1 workflow that is both fault tolerant and affordable for the smallest of PSAP."

NEC Availability for Any Need
"In today’s dynamic business environment, organizations of all sizes are finding it ever more important to maintain access to critical applications and data when hardware or software failures occur, or even in the event of a natural or man-made disaster," said Ken Hertzler, director of marketing for volume servers and system software for NEC Corporation of America’s IT Platform Group. "Whatever the cause, every computing system is vulnerable to failing at some point. NEC believes that a high availability solution that has to be measured in anything other than minutes is not high enough. Not only does NEC offer high availability solutions that can restore systems within minutes in the event of a facility disaster, NEC also offers continuous availability solutions that keep running even in the event of a catastrophic hardware server failure."

NEC’s complete business continuity solution is available now.