Stratus Program Offers SQL Server 2008 With Continuously Available ftServer Line

In cooperation with Microsoft Corp., Stratus Technologies announced today that it is offering Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with its newest ftServer(R) fault-tolerant platform. This software/server combination delivers a robust, continuously available infrastructure that scales with customers' business requirements and delivers predictable performance to users accessing critical business applications. Stratus delivers level-one support to customers who purchase the database software from the company, with escalation as needed to Microsoft; Stratus also services the server and OS, representing a single point of customer contact for rapid issue resolution.

Running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Editions, Stratus ftServer platform reliability surpasses comparable competitive database implementations using standard x86 servers at a fraction of the cost. Compared to alternative hardware failover configurations, the ftServer system is completely self-contained and ready to work out of the box with no software modifications and scripting required. By improving the simplicity of operation and removing the need to cluster for node availability, the user is freed up to take greater advantage of the flexibility and enterprise features of SQL Server.

The entire ftServer family provides field-proven uptime of nearly 99.9999 percent, the industry's most reliable Intel processor-based platform for Windows-based applications. By also using Stratus' Active Upgrade(TM) software with ftServer systems, customers can reduce both planned and unplanned downtime for online software upgrades and critical operating system hot fixes without having to take the server or application offline for extended periods.

"Among the wide range of availability requirements our family of Xeon 5500 processor-powered ftServer systems can satisfy, this new server family is an ideal database engine, benefitting from increased power and performance, together with the Intel QPI architecture and plug-and-play operational simplicity," said Denny Lane, Stratus director of product management. "Having delivered affordable mainframe-class availability for critical OLTP applications since 1982, Stratus' hardware/software combination lets customers deal with a single vendor to purchase, install and support a fully integrated database solution."

Superior database availability, half the cost

Using Oracle RAC with industry-standard servers to achieve high-availability for the Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition will cost approximately 125 percent more than deploying Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition on a similarly configured Stratus ftServer 6300 system(1). Using Standard Editions of both database products, an ftServer 4500 system with SQL Server 2008 costs approximately 40 percent less than Oracle 11g with RAC on a similarly configured server cluster(2). The fault-tolerant architecture of Stratus servers eliminates unplanned downtime, data loss, restarts and the need to provision additional server capacity to accommodate failover.

"Microsoft SQL Server users who need the highest degree of hardware availability for mid-scale databases will find the new ftServer family offers true fault tolerance in a price/performance package competitive with other solutions in the market," said Claude Lorenson, director of SQL Server marketing at Microsoft Corp. "Customers can have confidence in SQL Server on ftServer for local provisioning of database servers with exceptional uptime, rapid asynchronous data mirroring for disaster recovery, rolling upgrade-style patch management with minimal operational impact, and for any database application where underlying hardware with near-six nines availability is the preferred choice."

About Stratus Technologies

Stratus Technologies focuses exclusively on helping its customers keep critical business operations online without interruption. For more information, visit www.stratus.com.

(1) Servers configured with two quad-core 2.93GHz processors, 64GB memory, two 73GB disks, two FC HBAs

(2) Servers configured with two quad-core 2.00GHz processors, 32GB memory, two 73GB disks, two FC HBAs

Copyright 2009 Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. All rights reserved.

Stratus is a registered trademark of Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. The Stratus Technologies logo is a trademark of Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts:

Ed Marshall
Beaupre & Co. Public Relations
603-559-5816
Email Contact
www.beaupre.com

Ken Donoghue
Stratus Technologies
978-461-7269
Email Contact
www.stratus.com

SOURCE: Stratus Technologies

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