Planning for High Availability

There are other critical components in an HA system. For example:

Several server adapter card techniques can help a network manager increase network availability: load balancing; hot plug-ability; dual homing of server cards; and NOS optimization.

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems planning should include investment in a global, shared solution with reliable switch gear and full bypass capability, rather than deploying many low-capacity (ostensibly inexpensive) UPS systems for individual racks or devices in a fragmented approach.

Vendors have introduced a variety of new high-availability feature for enterprises that are considering building large-scale virtual private networks (VPNs). Competition in the maturing VPN gateway market will yield a stream of incremental high-availability features from all the major vendors. Internet VPNs for mission-critical applications, large branch networks and large remote access user populations can now be designed to take advantage of these new resiliency features, reducing the risks and costs associated with network congestion and downtime.

DBMS vendors have also been actively enhancing their products to fit in an HA world. For example: Clustered databases with increased numbers of nodes, improving scalability and availability. Advanced manageability and scalability: DBMS vendors continue to emphasize enhanced self- tuning capabilities for databases and ease of operational complexity. Scalability may be the decision factor for many enterprises that support large HA and mission-critical databases. Integrated monitoring solutions: DBMS tools vendors offer highly integrated monitoring solutions supporting heterogeneous databases across platforms, providing a holistic view of the entire environment, monitoring applications end to end. Standby database and data replication technology: Enterprises continue to address the growing need for business continuity by deploying redundant databases at remote locations. DBMS vendors will offer improved scalability and high-performance standby database and data replication technology to support business continuity.