Sun Microsystems will boost its enterprise clustering
product next year by fitting it with high-availability capabilities
used in telecommunications applications.
The Sun Netra HA (High Availability) Suite will be able to check
for fast recovery. The cluster membership API for understanding
what nodes are part of a cluster, will also be moved over to the
Sun Cluster package, said David Nelson-Gal, vice-president of Sun's
availability products group.
Netra HA Suite has been deployed in telecommunications
applications while Sun Cluster provides for general-purpose
clustering in enterprise environments.
"We're converging the technology base," Nelson-Gal said.
Event mechanisms will also be moved to Sun Cluster. "If you have
an application on multiple nodes, this is a way of establishing
communications between nodes in a cluster," said Nelson-Gal.
Sun, with its clustering plan, is looking to boost levels of
availability for applications such as application servers.
Jean Bozman, research vice-president for global enterprise
server solutions at IDC, said high availability is becoming more of
a requirement in applications such as web environments and
e-business.
"In a lot of these businesses, those levels of high availability
were not necessary even five years ago," Bozman said.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld