SteelEye works with HP to deliver HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Clusters to Linux customers.

SteelEye Technology has announced its collaboration with HP to deliver a "no single point of failure" Linux cluster system. Comprising SteelEye's LifeKeeper for Linux Version 4.1.1 integrated with industry- standard next-generation HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Clusters, this solution brings to the market total business continuity protection at an affordable price.

Until now, small- to mid-size companies were faced with prohibitive costs to ensure availability of their most critical data and applications. With the combination of SteelEye LifeKeeper for Linux 4.1.1 with HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Clusters, customers no longer have to make the difficult choice of leaving their business vulnerable to system failures. With the ability to monitor and recover the most popular applications on Linux such as Oracle 9i, Sendmail, SAMBA, MySQL and Apache, LifeKeeper for Linux with ProLiant DL380 Packaged Clusters is an ideal solution for businesses that need a system with failure-free reliability and are faced with significant budgetary constraints.

"Our company, Viaccess SA, a France Telecom company and world leader for conditional access for pay television and protection of IP content over broadband networks, chose HP ProLiant servers and SteelEye's LifeKeeper high availability software for their reliability, proven performance, and ease of deployment," said Gilles Merles, Viaccess IP Product Technical Manager. "We look forward to implementing HP's newest ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster as the next generation platform for Viaccess-Net, our IP conditional access service."

SteelEye's LifeKeeper is the first solution to deliver Linux high availability on the ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster. LifeKeeper for Linux was first certified on the HP ProLiant CL380 Packaged Cluster in 2000 using the HP StorageWorks RAID Array 4000 for shared SCSI storage. With the introduction of the HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster and the new SMART Array Cluster Storage subsystem, the combination of LifeKeeper for Linux and the HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster is ideal for the heavy lifting in small group and departmental environments.

"We needed to protect the availability of our file shares, user applications and user home drives, basically all of the network-based shares on our SAMBA server," said Jason McClish, Systems Administrator at Nucor Steel. "With HP ProLiant servers running SuSE and SteelEye's LifeKeeper for Linux, the solution was so affordable we were able to dedicate a backup server running idle in the event of a failover on the primary system. Their solution did everything I needed immediately, and they have addressed all my foreseeable requirements."

The changes made to the shared SCSI storage in HP ProLiant DL380 Packaged Clusters add independent paths to the newly announced SMART Array Cluster Storage subsystem. This dual path eliminates the single path to shared storage, which was a potential point of failure in previous implementations. The storage controllers operate in active-standby mode. If one controller has a problem, the SMART Array initiates a failover to the standby controller. All the while, LifeKeeper is ensuring that continuous access to applications and data is maintained. Coupled with the other built-in hardware redundancy components of the ProLiant DL380 (power supplies, fans, and buses), the dual- controller storage unit provides complete protection against hardware failures.

SteelEye LifeKeeper solutions have 24x7 support from HP Services on a global basis, providing customers one single point of contact for high availability clusters--hardware, software, solutions and services.

"From the very outset, we wished to achieve the same level of reliability and performance as the UNIX-based cluster configuration, but with half the budget," said Mr. Yuichi Adachi, General Manager of the e-Business Division at DKB Information Systems. "The verification results carried out by Japan Business Systems (JBS) in cooperation with the HP lab and Oracle perfectly met those requirements. What's more, database modules such as Oracle 8i or 9i were pre-prepared in LifeKeeper, so future system expansion is simple and the clearly defined requisite manpower and costs made it more attractive."

SteelEye has been delivering Linux high availability solutions with HP worldwide for the past two years, beginning with the ProLiant CL380 Packaged Cluster as well as 2-node to 16-node Fibre storage clusters. With the latest ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster offering more robust server performance and higher capacity storage with the SMART Array Cluster at a very attractive implementation cost, the global business community now has more advanced, low- cost alternatives to protect their critical business operations. SteelEye has also certified and is delivering its LifeKeeper for Windows 2000 solutions on the packaged cluster platform.

"The continued dedication and collaboration between the HP and SteelEye development teams make possible these technology improvements, which add significant value to the growing business needs for high reliability," said Jim Fitzgerald, SteelEye's founder and executive vice president of business development and marketing. "Also, with HP's new systems based on strong endorsement of Intel Itanium 2 processors now shipping, we see this new technology's potential to drive significant growth in sales of clustered high- end Linux and Windows servers."

Vince Gayman, HP vice president of marketing for management and high availability solutions, states, "Our relationship with SteelEye gets stronger every day and with the ProLiant DL380 Packaged Cluster as the wedge into the Linux environment, we have a winning solution for building an adaptive infrastructure."