Stratus Adds Dual-Core Fault Tolerant Server

Fault-tolerant server specialist Stratus Technologies Inc. on Monday unveiled its highest performing system to date, a fully redundant dual-core Xeon-based platform promising 99.999% reliability.

The use of fault-tolerant systems when compared with conventional clustered systems could save tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, depending on a specific company's cost of downtime, says Denny Lane, director of product marketing for Stratus.

A company that loses $25,000 per hour due to server downtime would stand to lose more than $200,000 annually with a system that offers three 9s of reliability, over $100,000 with one that offers four 9s of reliability, but only about $2,000 with a system that features five 9s of reliability, he says.

"Clusters are good for disaster recovery or replication of sites, but clusters with only three 9s or four 9s of reliability can translate into a lot of potential loss," Lane says.

The new ftServer 5700 systems is a fully redundant two-way server utilizing four 2.8 GHz dual-core Xeon processors, providing 99.999% reliability. The system provides about 25% higher performance than Stratus' previous top-end system.

"We are very excited about multi-core," Lane says. "Dual-core today, and four-core beyond, starts to give much higher performance capabilities in a much smaller package—lower cost, lower power consumption, and lower rack usage."

The ftServer 5700 will be available at the end of January, and depending on configuration, will be priced around $45,000.