Veritas Cluster Server

The Veritas Cluster Server server provides high readiness of the most important applications in a Data storage center. It automatically reacts to failures, executing application recovery. In case of failure of all website it restarts applications in other Data storage center therefore even in case of accident of IT service remain available.

The majority of applications, crucial for business, consist of several links including, for example, web components, actually applications, the middleware and databases today. All of them accommodate on different servers, platforms, on the physical and virtual resources using different storage systems. Therefore ensuring complete availability of business services is a serious problem today. The IT companies should work with a set of tools, to execute a number of manual transactions and to provide coordination of actions of groups of specialists in case of unavailability of the service – as planned and unplanned.

Veritas Cluster Server 6.0 and Symantec Application HA 6.0 supporting a new feature of Virtual Business Services (VBS) are created especially for continued support of the high level of readiness and reduction of breaks of access to services for all range of modern business applications. They allow to manage multilink structure as a whole. Administrators can start, stop, hold testing without influence on availability of services and recover complex applications in one click by a mouse, providing flexibility and mobility for business services. Veritas Cluster Server offers users convenient means for support of applications without additional configuring. A system is available to all popular OS and virtualization platforms, including IBM AIX, HP-UX, Oracle Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows and VMware.

The Symantec company released in September, 2012 free expansion for the clustered file system by Veritas Cluster File System for storage area networks which considerably reduces the cost of analytical processing of big arrays of corporate data.

The new solution of Symantec is obliged by the name to a software platform with open source texts of Apache Hadoop intended for development of systems of analytical processing of data bulks. Such systems can analyze information array the size in several petabyte and reveal patterns, important for business, and a trend. For example, to define the user preferences or to make recommendations about price policy, based on data of the database of sales.

Symantec Enterprise Solution for Hadoop forms additional level in the Storage Area Network under control of Veritas Cluster File System which allows to connect analytical applications directly to "live" databases. It saves from costs for creation and maintenance of the certain data warehouse for the system of analytical processing and also eliminates expensive operations on copying of these main business applications in it.

The new solution of Symantec is developed in cooperation with specialists of Hortonworks company, the providing service and support within the Apache Hadoop project. According to the statement of developers, the solution considerably increases efficiency of the analysis, provides functions of the increased availability, allows to carry out several analytical tasks without decline in production and provides processing of arrays of information up to 16 petabyte in size.

Symantec Enterprise Solution for Hadoop supports the systems of analytical processing of data bulks of Hortonworks Data Platform 1.0 and Apache Hadoop 1.0.2.

Main Functions

• Provides automatic abnormal switching of applications and databases within a local Data storage center or on several remote Data storage centers.
• Supports physical and virtual operating systems of different type thanks to availability of ready-made solutions for all bases for data, applications and types of memory.
• Provides complete testing of postdisaster recovery without failures in operation of applications.
• Allows to control, configure and create reports for several clusters of Veritas on different platforms via one console with the web interface.

Main features

• Provides readiness of the most important applications and databases during planned or unplanned breaks in work, tracing a status of applications and transferring them to other resources in case of accident or failure.
• Reduces training costs and work and also licensing and a software maintenance due to use of the uniform instrument of work with clusters for all platforms of physical and virtual operating systems.
• Provides confidence in efficiency of the selected plan of postdisaster recovery.
• Increases efficiency of the administrator thanks to expanded functions of visualization, automation of standard problems of creation of reports, the centralized control of work of global applications and centralized operation as notifications on a basis the politician.

Veritas Cluster Server 6.0

The Symantec company announced in the fall of 2012 implementation of new features for recovery and preserving of operability of systems in the next version of the solution Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) 6.0. The updated VCS system provides recovery of virtual machines in emergency situations without noticeable idle times for end users.

The official release of the new version of VCS 6.0 is planned for October 22, 2012. In this solution administrators to customers will be able easily to switch the problem virtual machine to the new platform. For such switching different failures in operation of applications can cause, the virtualized operating system or a hypervisor of ESX. During the procedure of abnormal switching all loading of the source computer is transferred to the new virtual machine created on other hypervisor which has no problems with execution of loading.

Representatives of Symantec company which owns the Veritas brand now, emphasize that they in the traditional systems of a problem in the operating system in the virtual machine do not allow to execute abnormal switching as the level of failure is too serious. Nevertheless, in the new version of technology of a clustering of VCS it is easy to transfer such virtual machine with failures to other virtual machine in a cluster where problems are not observed. Thus, operation of application can be continued in general without idle times. As no resets of virtual machines are required, similar approach almost completely excludes idle times at elimination of failures.

The previous version of Symantec of VCS already offered customers of function for ensuring the increased availability to virtual machines, but only on a case of machine failures, but not failures in applications. Besides, tools of Symantec of VCS have a serious advantage in comparison with the built-in technologies in the VMware platform - it is protection of both the equipment, and the software using the same management tools. Actually, the technology of Symantec of VCS provides the centralized control of the increased availability of applications both for physical, and for virtual servers.