Stratus Technologies : Library : White Papers & Position Papers

White Papers

The Availability Digest - Fault Tolerance for Virtualized Environments (PDF, 352K)

Virtualization is an extremely important and effective technology to reduce the IT costs of data centers. It has the potential to increase server utilization from 15% or less to 70% or more. The need for reliable hardware that can maintain continuous uptime 24/7 is even more important in a virtual infrastructure. If you are planning to use virtualization to implement business continuity or disaster recovery, ensuring you have the most reliable hardware is essential.

Seven Virtues of Virtualization: Avoiding Deadly Mistakes that Doom Business-Critical Service Management (PDF 277K)

Disaster recovery and business continuity top the list of server virtualization drivers. And, the stakes are even higher when you virtualize business-critical IT services. Explore the role that proper project planning and management play in keeping these initiatives on track.

Fault Tolerance in a Virtual World (PDF 294K)

The Criticality Quotient of x86 servers and applications directly correlates to the number of business processes, users and applications dependent on virtual machines and infrastructure. This white paper examines five typical use cases for virtualization, answering why, where and how fault-tolerance can help businesses reduce risk.

All Data Is Not Equal (PDF, 115K)

Application vulnerabilities and risks must be weighed to identify resources, performance requirements and service level objectives to ensure business continuity. Using real-world case studies, this white paper examines Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) best practices for disaster preparedness.

Server Virtualization: Do's and Don'ts for Mission-Critical Manufacturing Systems (PDF, 346 K)

Discover best practices you can use to benefit from server virtualization today. Avoid mistakes that could affect the availability and performance of your mission-critical manufacturing IT solutions.

Best Practices for Server Virtualization in Mission-Critical Healthcare IT (PDF, 481K)

This paper provides an introduction to server virtualization for hospitals and healthcare delivery organizations. It also offers best practices you can use to benefit from virtualization, while avoiding missteps that could affect the availability and performance of mission-critical healthcare IT.

High Availability: Is it Sufficient for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?
A closer look at what's behind the push towards continuous IT availability (PDF, 245K)

For mission-critical IT, service outages and data loss pose serious consequences. This white paper examines how availability management, disaster recovery and business continuity support one another and offers insight to find success at all of them.

ESRI - Place Matters: Geographically Enabling Government (PDF, 443K)

Explore opportunities to leverage the ubiquity of the Internet, investment in Service-Oriented Architecture and progress toward e-government transformation through the integration of enterprise level, server-based geospatial technology. Read the ESRI and Stratus Technologies sponsored white paper Place Matters: Geographically Enabling Government

Payments Risk and Fraud Management: The New World Order (PDF, 379K)

In this white paper, we assess the current environment in payments risk and fraud management and discuss the business challenges that are leading companies to consider more proactive measures to combat fraud.

Future Directions in Building Customer Loyalty: Creating a Rewarding Customer Experience (PDF, 235K)

The future loyalty battlefield will be about the customer experience: how you treat your customers at every point of interaction with them — this white paper examines the requirements for success in this new world order of loyalty, and identifies critical action steps required to realize this new vision for loyalty and rewards.

Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA): Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities (PDF, 313K)

So what needs to be done? Now is the time to review and develop your response to the challenges and opportunities offered by SEPA.

Manufacturing IT Infrastructure — Ready or Not for MES? (PDF, 87K)

Learn why continuous-availability systems are key elements to long-term success with manufacturing execution systems (MES).

Position Papers

High Availability

Closing the IT Availability Gap: New Options for Traditional and Virtualized IT Environments (PDF, 333K)
An easy-to-use, affordable high-availability and virtualization solution that supports the business-critical needs of organizations using standard x86 servers, Stratus Avance™ software closes the availability gap for small-to-medium businesses and larger enterprises with distribute/remote Windows and Linux computing environments

Banking

Real-time, All the Time Fraud Risk Management from Alaric and Stratus (PDF,380K)
Traditionally, fraud-detection systems have been just that, systems that can detect fraud after the event. The new generation of anti-fraud systems from Alaric and Stratus work in real time — the same pace as the payments systems they are trying to protect.

Healthcare

Stratus Medical Grade Servers (PDF, 675K)
This paper presents an overview of how a Medical Grade solution can guarantee more than five nines—99.999%—of uptime for critical healthcare applications. You'll see how continuous availability alleviates the impact of IT downtime and simplifies ongoing maintenance and support in healthcare organizations like yours.

Manufacturing

VMware Infrastructure 3 and Stratus Servers: a Manufacturing Industry Guide (PDF, 209K)
With VMware VI3, the most widely deployed virtualization software suite, and Stratus ftServer systems, the premier Continuous Availability servers, manufacturers are gaining new options for managing uptime and complexity of MES and other mission-critical applications across their lifecycles.

Maximize Availability and Performance, and Tame Complexity of Manufacturing and Utilities IT Infrastructures
(PDF 371K)
The complexity of information technology at manufacturing and utilities plants is increasing in response to global challenges. The Stratus ftServer family and our Continuous Availability Lifecycle Management (CALM™) Services ease the technology skills crunch at the plant with designs that inherently promote the uptime, performance and integrity of IT-driven business processes.

Continuous Availability for SAP Perfect Plant Environments (PDF,349K)
SAP's Perfect Plant initiative brings together best-of-breed solution partners — creating a technology ecosystem that delivers the functionality, integration, data synchronization, and certified platforms that enable companies to optimize their performance. This paper describes Stratus infrastructure solutions and best practices for deploying an SAP Perfect Plant.

Continuous Availability for Power Plant Automation: Dr. Rainer M. Speh, Siemens AG
Siemens Power Generation's SPPA-T3000 web-based Power Plant I&C solution is setting a new benchmark in controls. Gain insight into its advanced technologies and architectural design which incorporates Stratus fault-tolerant ftServer systems.

Public Sector

Ensure the Availability of IT Solutions in Mission-Critical Government Locations (PDF, 118k)
Affordable fault-tolerant servers offer government institutions at all levels important advantages that help them meet specific IT objectives, improve operational efficiency and information sharing - while maintaining the highest levels of data integrity and security.

Telecommunications

Leverage Session Control for Sustainable Competitive Advantage (PDF, 392K)
Learn how to deploy cost-effective IP communication solutions with the flexible Stratus Session Controller. This paper sheds important light on the migration to IMS architecture and the emerging functions of SBCS.

Capture Enterprise Communications Revenue with Hosted IP Centrex (PDF, 591K)
Enterprises today are presented with a wide range of options for corporate telecommunications facilities. Hosted IP Centrex offers the best of both worlds and provides service providers an excellent opportunity to maximize revenues and deliver valuable services. Learn more about how to take advantage of this growing trend.

Transform Voice over Broadband Opportunity into Sustainable Profitability (PDF, 415K)
Voice over Broadband (VoBB) technology presents a tremendous opportunity to service providers. Download this paper and discover how VoBB has emerged as a leader in new network service delivery.

Converge Legacy and Next-Generation Services: Stratus Internetwork Services Signaling Gateway (ISSG)Solution (PDF, 3.7MB)
Simplify life for your subscribers and increase revenue — without massive changes or huge investments in the network. ISSG allows you to converge services across networks, use them in next-gen networks and combine legacy and next-gen capabilities into new differentiated services.

Leverage VoIP to Increase Mobile ARPU: Stratus Mobile Call Convergence Solution (PDF, 1.6MB)
Take a practical approach to bridging GSM and VoIP. Stratus' converged mobile offering, MCC, allows you to maximize service usage by augmenting GSM calling with IP capabilities for voice and text messages — all using a common GSM phone number (MSISDN).

Combine Services for Increased Revenue: Stratus Converged Service Broker Solution (PDF, 941K)
CSB provides service orchestration for selection, interaction and composition of disparate services across multiple networks. The result is a solution that enables legacy and next-generation networks to combine IN and SIP-based services to increase ARPU and decrease costs.

Solutions Services

Best Practices Guide for Protecting Mission-Critical Business Processes
Protect the availability of business-critical processes while keeping costs in line. This e-book takes you from business analysis to design and deployment to an actual case study using recognized industry best practices and governance guidelines.

7 Steps to Mission-Critical IT Services (PDF, 1.5MB)
Find out the steps that companies can take to ensure end-to-end availability and reliability of the IT resources that enable essential business processes.

End-to-End Continuous Availability (PDF, 41K)
Customers rely on Stratus’ continuous availability ‘hardening’ expertise to meet a growing need for 100 percent uptime. Understand the market drivers, technologies and methodologies behind these successes

Products
- Server Technologies
  - Achieve Continuous Availability for Microsoft^® Windows^® Compute Cluster Server, PDF 163K
  - Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) provides a high-performance computing platform that is simple to deploy, operate and integrate into existing IT infrastructure and tools. With industry-leading uptime that exceeds 99.999%, Stratus ftServer systems, are the perfect hardware choice for mission-critical CCS components.
  - VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 and Stratus Continuous Availability (PDF, 434 K)
  - Stratus and VMware deliver the powerful industry-leading tools of VI3 at availability levels that surpass mainframe-class virtualization solutions.
  - Stratus Continuous Processing Technology for Microsoft^® Windows^® Environments (PDF, 226K)
  - Continuous Processing technology has continued to evolve in second and third generations of the Stratus ftServer family. Fundamentals behind the Continuous Processing design — lockstep technology, failsafe software, and the ActiveService™ architecture — are explained in detail.
  - Stratus^® Continuous Processing^® Technology for Red Hat^® Enterprise Linux^® Environments (PDF, 288K)
  - Continuous Processing technology has continued to evolve in second and third generations of the Stratus ftServer family. Fundamentals behind the Continuous Processing design — lockstep technology, failsafe software, and the ActiveService™ architecture — are explained in detail.
  - Evaluating Alternatives for Windows and Linux Server Availability (PDF, 263K)
  - Review the spectrum of approaches to maximum server availability for Windows environments, and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of each.
  - Writing Drivers for Reliability (PDF, 129K)
  - This paper provides guidelines for writing drivers to ensure that the system keeps running during hardware failures and online configuration changes. (for Microsoft Windows OSs)
- Service Technologies
  - ftService Solutions for a 24 x 7 World (PDF, 166K)
  - Understand how Stratus integrated Windows and Linux maintenance services ensure the highest levels of computing availability for Mission-Critical ftService customers
  - Stratus ActiveService™ Architecture: Remote Access to Mission-critical Support, 24/7 (PDF 858K)
  - Get an in-depth overview of the downtime-preventing features and benefits of the Stratus ActiveService Architecture.
- Storage Technologies
  - From SCSI to SATA: a Viable, Affordable Alternative for Server and Network Attached Storage Environments [External Link]
  - This paper compares SATA and SCSI technologies and outlines the advantages of SATA over traditional SCSI interfaces in storage.
  - Maximize Your ftScalable™ Storage Return on Investment (ROI) (PDF, 174K)
  - This paper unravels the high-level difference between SAS and SATA drive technology and presents the ROI advantage customers can achieve when they mix SAS and SATA disks in a single ftScalable storage array.