New VERITAS Cluster Server for NT Delivers High Availability Management for Mission-Critical Applications on Windows NT

Business Wire, April 4, 2000

Business Editors

Inforum 2000

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 4, 2000

VERITAS Software Brings its Flagship UNIX High-Availability

Product to Microsoft Windows NT

VERITAS(R) Software Corporation (Nasdaq: VRTS), the industry's leading enterprise-class application storage management software provider, today announced VERITAS Cluster Server(TM) for NT, expanding platform support for the company's flagship high availability management product. Enabling customers with Windows NT-based applications to create high-availability clusters of two to 32 servers, VERITAS Cluster Server delivers the additional scalability and flexibility necessary to extend the rapidly growing Windows NT Server environment to mission-critical levels of availability. VERITAS Cluster Server for NT benefits customers with large Windows NT server farms, SANs used for consolidating Windows NT storage, and eBusiness application environments using both UNIX and Windows NT servers.

"Many of our customers rely upon Windows NT-based environments for their business- and mission-critical applications," said Dan Kuznetsky, program director, International Data Corporation. "As VERITAS Software delivers integrated clustering and storage management products to the Windows NT market, we believe the Company will provide the kind of robust high-availability solutions customers need to protect their next wave of E-Commerce applications."

Windows NT servers are increasingly being deployed in data centers for e-mail, Web serving, file/print and database applications. The shift to a web-enabled eBusiness model for IT is increasing the required level of availability of these applications to mission- critical levels. Application downtime equates to more than just lost productivity; downtime renders lost revenue opportunity and reduces customer loyalty.

The scalability and policy-based failover capabilities of VERITAS Cluster Server make it possible to efficiently manage the availability of mission-critical applications in large NT server farms at much lower hardware costs than traditional, less-scalable products.

"VERITAS Software has a long and successful history of delivering clustering solutions," said Fred van den Bosch, executive vice president of engineering, VERITAS Software. "By delivering a proven application availability management solution specifically tuned for the Windows NT marketplace, VERITAS Software provides its customers with powerful tools to manage the explosive growth of NT-based environments and a single interface to manage the heterogeneous clusters we see today."

VERITAS Cluster Server for NT now brings the same high availability capabilities to Windows NT servers in the data center that VERITAS Software has successfully deployed on Sun Solaris for more than five years. Supporting 32 servers in a single cluster and monitoring up to 256 clusters from a single console, VERITAS Cluster Server for NT can manage availability of large single function server farms for applications such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.

Customers deploying SANs to share consolidated storage between many servers can now use VERITAS Cluster Server for NT to quickly fail-over mission critical Microsoft SQL databases from one server to another, while logically re-mapping SAN attached storage to the new server. This capability allows customers to create large clusters without the expense of duplicating disks behind every server. Within mixed UNIX/NT server environments typical of eBusiness infrastructures, VERITAS Cluster Server can also be used to manage high availability of Solaris, HP/UX and Windows/NT clusters from a single console, reducing training costs and simplifying administration.

About VERITAS Cluster Server

VERITAS Cluster Server is an architecture-independent availability management solution designed to proactively manage application service groups and allow customers to manage high- availability systems in multi-platform environments. Each service group consists of an application and all hardware and software resources necessary for delivering service to clients. VERITAS Cluster Server provides automatic and manual service group fail-over from one server to any other server in the cluster, allowing customers to manage both planned and unplanned downtime. VERITAS Software supports an extensive list of application agents and supports sophisticated features, such as cascading service group fail-over and tight integration with VERITAS Volume Manager(TM) to support large SAN configurations. Allowing up to 32 nodes within a single cluster, VERITAS Cluster Server is available for Solaris, HP/UX and Windows NT, and supports more third-party storage configurations than any other clustering product. Customers may also purchase a VERITAS Software Editions/HA bundle, which includes VERITAS Cluster Server, for major applications such as Oracle 8i.

Pricing and Availability

VERITAS Cluster Server for Windows NT is available directly from VERITAS Software and through authorized VERITAS Cluster Server Certified Team VERITAS(TM) Advantage VARs. Pricing for typical Exchange Server implementation is $3,500 per server. For more information about VERITAS Cluster Server for Windows NT, VERITAS Software or its other application storage management software solutions, please contact the Company's North American sales headquarters office at: 400 International Parkway, Heathrow, FL 32746; (800) 327-2232; (407) 531-7501 or FAX: (407) 531-7730.