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Stratus releases Avance 3.0

Stratus Technologies just launched a new version of its Avance high availability platform that supports Intel Xeon E5 “Sandy Bridge” processor-powered servers, such as those offered by HP, IBM, Dell and Intel. This technology is designed to make it possible for customers to know that their applications will operate without interruption. The problem? Stratus is known and loved by only a small circle of friends.
Written by Dan Kusnetzky, Contributor

Stratus Technologies just launched a new version of its Avance high availability platform that supports Intel Xeon E5 “Sandy Bridge” processor-powered servers, such as those offered by HP, IBM, Dell and Intel. This technology is designed to make it possible for customers to know that their applications will operate without interruption.

What Stratus has to say about Avance 3.0

Avance 3.0 can now support up to 24 virtual machines (VM) on a single licensed high-availability server platform, representing a 50% increase over its predecessor. The improvement in VM density can lower operational, maintenance and management costs by enabling more consolidation of servers and applications.

Additional features include:

  • Support for Intel Modular Server (IMS) systems, built on Intel Multi-Flex technology, to create a high-availability blade platform between two IMS chassis
  • Faster snapshotting to reduce VM back-up time and downtime exposure
  • System manageability enhancements that improve the user experience
  • Transparent fault-handling

Avance and Avance Foundation software are the only HA solutions that automatically detect, isolate and handle faults, thereby keeping applications running despite system interruptions. This self-managing, high-availability software includes a single, web-based management console that enables remote monitoring and management of servers, VMs, and network interfaces. Avance software constantly monitors system heartbeat and the health of drives, fans, power supplies, and other system components to predict faults and performance degradation. Its highly intuitive system management dashboard presents the IT administrator with detailed configuration and alert information with guidance on resolving issues. Avance allows server nodes to be geographically separated for local split-site disaster recovery.

Snapshot analysis

Stratus Technologies has quietly offered continuous availability systems and software for quite some time. While this announcement shows that its Avance software continues to be enhanced with new hardware support, greater scalability and easier management of resource, Stratus still faces some challenges, however.

Stratus goes about the business of transparently detecting, isolating and managing system faults and providing highly available workloads so quietly that the industry could be forgiven for not being aware of the power of Avance.

Stratus' technology could be considered as a "disaster prevention" rather than disaster recovery solution. The company is so confident of the abilities of its software, that it offers an uptime guarantee.

When I've had the opportunity to speak with partners and customers, I'm always told a story of how Stratus saved the day. I'm also told how easy using Avance is. Furthermore, I'm often told that the customer is happy that there was no need to adopt costly clustering, automation or orchestration software.

Stratus' straightforward approach faces competition from many other suppliers. The Neverfail Group offers continuous processing technology that offers similar levels of simplicity. The usual cast of characters that offer clustering to create a more highly available environment can also be considered competitors. This includes HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle/Sun, Red Hat and SUSE.

Getting the industries attention is Stratus' biggest challenge.

Note: Stratus is a Kusnetzky Group client.

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