Marathon Technologies Corporation
3
Marathon
FTvirtual Server
- Fault-Tolerance Through Software
To address the need for continuous availability of mission-critical applica-
tions, Marathon Technologies has designed its FTvirtual Server software to
work with blade server configurations as well as traditional servers.
Marathon software harnesses the redundancy provided by two BladeCenter
servers to create a true, fault- tolerant environment for Windows applica-
tions.This is accomplished by loading the Marathon software on any two
blade servers and interconnecting them via the BladeCenter’s integrated
chassis switching matrix. The Marathon software synchronizes the two
servers and creates a virtual application environment that runs
on both
servers simultaneously
. If either server in the connected pair fails, the appli-
cation environment continues to function uninterrupted, using the process-
ing power of the other. Unlike typical clustering technologies which require
seconds or even minutes to “fail-over” application processing and may
incure data loss, there is no failover with Marathon software, so there is no
downtime.
The result is a truely fault-tolerant Windows environment for BladeCenter
configurations. Enterprises get all the cost savings and operational efficien-
cies of the BladeCenter while protecting their business-critical Windows
applications and data, even in the event of a blade failure.
Conclusion
Blade servers are helping companies save money and increase efficiency
and flexibility in their data centers. However, without adequate fault protec-
tion, these benefits are soon lost in the event of downtime. Marathon’s
FTvirtual Server software delivers a simple, affordable way to protect impor-
tant applications and data running on IBM eServer BladeCenter configura-
tions.
