This application clustering solution provides application high availability for the most important applications in your data center. If it detects a fault, it takes action, recovering applications automatically. If your whole site goes down, it restarts those applications at another data center, so even during a disaster, your IT services keep running.

Veritas Cluster Server monitors an application and all its dependent components, and if it detects a fault, it takes action, recovering applications automatically. If your whole site goes down, it restores those applications at another data center, so even during a disaster, your IT services keep running.

Veritas Cluster Server can also reduce planned downtime by temporarily moving applications to a standby server when routine maintenance such as upgrades or patches requires that the primary server be taken offline.

Key Features

• Automates database and application failover within a data center or to multiple remote data centers.
• Supports heterogeneous physical and virtual operating system platforms with out-of-the-box solutions for all major database, application, and storage vendors.
• Provides comprehensive disaster recovery testing while applications remain on-line.
• Allows administrators to monitor, manage and report on multiple Veritas clusters on different platforms from a single web-based console.

Key Benefits

• Ensures availability of mission critical applications and databases during planned and unplanned downtime by monitoring the status of the application and providing fast application failover in the event of an outage or disaster.
• Reduces training and labor costs, as well as software licensing and support by using the same clustering tool across all physical and virtual operating system platforms.
• Builds confidence that the recovery plan will work if a disaster were to happen.
• Increases administrator efficiency through enhanced visualization, automation of common reporting tasks, centralized operational control for global applications, and centralized policy-based notifications.

Our Offerings:

·  ESG Technology Brief – Implementing the Right High Availability and Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Business
Migrating HP Serviceguard to Veritas Cluster Server on Linux

· High Availability for Databases: Protecting Sybase Databases with Veritas Cluster Server

· High Availability for Databases: Protecting Oracle Databases with Veritas Cluster Server

· High Availability for Mission- Critical Applications: Protecting Applications with Veritas Cluster Server

· High Availability for Databases: Protecting Oracle Databases with Veritas Cluster Server

· Geographically Dispersed Open Clusters

· Symantec High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP

· Protecting Business-Critical Applications in a VMware Infrastructure 3 Environment

· Veritas Cluster Server HA/DR Fire Drill

· Implementing Solaris Zones with Veritas Cluster Server

· Business Continuity: Symantec Intelligent Application Recovery Solutions Guide

· Symantec Data Center Solutions for Microsoft Exchange

Out-of-the-box support for applications and databases

Veritas Cluster Server provides off-the-shelf support for a wide range of applications, including, but not limited to; SAP®, BEA®, Siebel®, Oracle Applications, Microsoft Exchange®, and PeopleSoft® as well as enterprise-class databases such as Oracle®, DB2®, SQL Server®, and Sybase®. In addition, Symantec continually provides support for new applications. Support for custom-built applications can also be added.

Comprehensive hardware and platform support

Veritas Cluster Server is the only solution that can support all leading operating systems, including UNIX, Microsoft Windows, Linux and virtual platforms, as well as the widest range of heterogeneous hardware configurations. Using Cluster Server, customers can add high availability to the current infrastructure without having to purchase additional hardware. Organizations can mix and match the servers and storage within a single cluster and share storage infrastructure using the same tool across platforms to reduce training, administrative, and hardware costs.

Advanced virtual machine support

With virtualization technologies, multiple virtual machines are commonly hosted on a solitary physical server. A failure of that physical server can lead to a loss of availability for several applications. As a result, the need to make services highly available increases with the use of virtualization technologies. Veritas Cluster Server provides a single solution for clustering both physical and virtual systems.

With Cluster Server, administrators can monitor an application running within a virtual machine and recover it in the event of a failure.

Faster failure detection

Veritas Cluster Server enables the faster detection of faults by asynchronously monitoring selected resources with its Intelligent Monitoring Framework. This means that failures can be detected instantaneously instead of waiting for a non-response from a faulted resource. This also reduces the

CPU overhead associated with traditional poll-based monitoring. Intelligent Monitoring Framework support is available for Process-based and Mount-based agents and will support more agents in the future.

Availability across any distance

For mission critical applications that must remain online even in the event of a site failure, Veritas Cluster Server provides disaster recovery across any distance. Cluster Server allows organizations to deploy both local high availability and remote clustering for complete disaster recovery. With the single click of a button, Cluster Server can migrate applications between servers in a local data center or move all applications to a data center thousands of miles away.

Automated disaster recovery testing

Because production servers and applications are constantly changing, regularly testing a disaster recovery strategy is critical to guarantee a successful recovery in the event of an outage. To better guarantee successful recovery, Veritas Cluster Server includes Fire Drill, a tool that simulates disaster recovery tests, by starting up an application at the DR site like it would in an actual disaster. Because it is a simulation, Fire Drill does not disrupt production applications so it can be run as often as necessary, without the disruption and cost of traditional DR testing.

Simple to install, configure, and maintain

RCSoffers Installation and Upgrade AssessmentServices to ensure server readiness for the Veritas StorageFoundation™, Veritas Storage Foundation™ forWindows® and Veritas™ Cluster Server products. VeritasCluster Server provides administrators with easy-to-useconfiguration wizards for simplified storage managementand cluster implementation. The Cluster Simulator, a freedownload, allows cluster administrators to simulateapplication failover scenarios and familiarize themselveswith Cluster Server. Cluster Simulator helps administratorssimulate high availability environments from their laptopsand test multiple application failover scenarios withoutaffecting production environments.

Advanced failover logic

With Veritas Cluster Server, IT administrators can set failover policies based on server capacity. Cluster Server then chooses the best server for a specific application at the time of failure based on application needs and the current state of resources in the cluster. It allows true N+1 “roaming spare” or N+M “active – active” capability for maximum availability without the cost of a dedicated spare per application. When a failure occurs, Cluster Server can automatically choose the least utilized server and add repaired servers back into the selection pool when they rejoin the cluster. Advanced failover logic in Cluster Server ensures that application uptime is maximized and server resources are utilized as efficiently as possible. Additionally, when intra-cluster communication breaks down, it is possible that two systems in a cluster try to write to the same storage and cause data corruption. Cluster Server advanced data protection logic shields data from becoming corrupted when a split brain situation arises by providing arbitration over cluster membership decisions. This guarantees data integrity as well as availability of service. The membership arbitration is provided using SCSI III protocol utilizing an odd set of coordinator disks or optionally through a software solution that is enabled via a Coordination Point Server.

Multi-cluster management and reporting

With the increasing number of applications and heterogeneous clustered servers distributed across multiple data centers, management of clusters can be painful. Using Veritas Operations Manager, customers can now monitor, manage, and report on Veritas Cluster Server implementations on different platforms from a single web based console. The Veritas Cluster Server management capabilities increase administrator efficiency by providing enhanced visualization of the managed clusters, centralized control for global applications, and complete reports of each application’s availability status. Cluster Server also reduces application downtime by helping administrators avoid common cluster configuration mistakes, audit unexpected cluster configuration changes, and provide a standard way for administrators to detect and investigate cluster problems and track management history of all the managed clusters.