RSF-1
RSF-1, the Resilient Server Facility, makes applications and services highly available by automatically switching between servers (2-32) should a server or service fail. It provides a multi-directional redundant facility allowing servers to constantly monitor and "shadow" each other.
English
Supported Technologies
AIX,
HP/UX,
Linux,
Silicon Graphics IRIX,
Solaris/Sun OS,
Windows XP/2000/NT
Software
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Pricing
Server
1500 to 30000
sales@starfiretechnology.com
(919)460-0300
indirect channel, reseller network
Resources
Additional Product Information
RSF-1, the Resilient Server Facility, makes applications and services highly available by automatically switching between servers (2-32) should a server or service fail. It provides a multi-directional redundant facility allowing servers to constantly monitor and "shadow" each other.;No redundant investment;Rather than keeping a standby option idle as your failover server, RSF-1 allows operational systems to act as standby servers for others and vice-versa, ensuring that your investment is not wasted. In the event of a server failing, its shadow will initialise the failed service(s), thus ensuring continued availability.;Highly available services;RSF-1 not only provides a highly available platform but also highly available services, allowing individual applications to be stopped, started and migrated between nodes, without affecting other application execution environments or requiring shadow systems to be rebooted.;Automatic or Manual Switch-overs;When a server or service fails, RSF-1 detects the breakdown and can either restart all associated services on an available cluster node or signal an operator. RSF-1 also monitors the health of individual services on a node via service agents. Should a failure be detected, it can either restart the service or fail it over to another node in the cluster.;Monitoring and control;RSF-1 includes both Java and curses based system administration modules that allow RSF-1 heartbeats to be monitored in real time. They also show the status of any RSF-1 instances available on the network and provide manual switch-overs functions. The curses console can be used remotely over a dial-up link.;An SNMP agent sends RSF-1 status information to management consoles such as Sun Net Manager and HP OpenView. Standard system logging allows log messages to be intercepted and redirected via email or pager using additional software.;Multi-protocol heartbeat;RSF-1 uses disk, TCP/IP and RS232 connections to establish heartbeat mechanisms providing independent monitors, all of which must fail before a machine is deemed to be unavailable. The RS232 component uses a custom protocol and is completely independent from network service daemons.;Secondary IP addressing;Floating host names and IP addresses are used to alleviate the need for any changes to client configurations after failovers. The node in the cluster that is restarting the services simply assumes the identity of the failed machine.;Load sharing;RSF-1 treats applications as individual process units and executes them on one of a number of servers, as defined by the RSF-1 configuration.;Typically, each server will be a primary node for a group of services, which will all be initiated on one server at system start-up. Once running, the RSF-1 administrator can switch individual services to other nodes in the cluster. This can be used for server optimisation, load balancing, or to grant more resources to certain applications. For example, a Payroll application may require more system resources on certain days. Using this feature of RSF-1, the administrator could move all or some process units to a shadow server to achieve this effect.;Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity;Shadowed systems can be geographically disparate, providing high availability across multiple sites and a framework for disaster recovery.;With the aid of additional hardware, we can now provide high performance, intelligent switching between SCSI-2 (Small Computer Systems Interface) and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks.