Disaster Resilient Installations

The basic setup of any AVTware installation is to run one (or multiple) virtual Alpha and VAX instances on a single host. The license content is maintained on that same host, controlling all active instances.

It is also possible to set up more sophisticated installations with multiple Alpha and VAX instances running across multiple host platforms (hardware, Virtual Machine and Cloud). These can be clustered and/or act as hot/cold fail over systems. With the help of AVTware you can build all types of fail over resiliency in your installed base, ranging from simple (low cost) to totally fault-tolerant (more expensive).

The AVTware solutions allow you to create many variants to match your needs and budget, based on the following capabilities:

• vtAlpha and vtVAX run on the vtServer hypervisor;
• vtServer runs Bare Metal or in virtual machines;
• VM Live Host Migration is supported;
• AVTware licensing works across the network;
• Production and Disaster Recovery Licenses (DRL), which can be distributed across the network;
• OpenVMS and Tru64 Clustering is supported;
• Local or network storage (NAS, SAN, NFS, iSCSI)

These capabilities, and the fact that your Alpha or VAX are now virtual, allow you to create disaster tolerance in all gradations.

1. Basic setup: a virtual Alpha/VAX on a host. When maintaining good backup discipline and/or network storage your virtual Alpha or VAX can be brought back online within a short time frame, assuming you have some spare X86 system available;
2. Owning a Disaster Recovery License ensures that you can get back on-line quickly, even when the original host and license are destroyed. You can continue your operation until the situation is permanently resolved;
3. To keep downtime to an absolute minimum, maintain a cold or warm stand-by host with DRL and shared storage with the primary system;
4. Combine AVTware and clustering to eliminate any downtime. We have used this capability to replace Alpha systems in the field, simultaneously relocating them to another site without shutting the systems down.
5. VM Live Host Migration allows you to temporarily relocate your running Alpha(s) and VAX(es) to carry out preventive maintenance.
6. Cloud platforms are also supported, including the option to create your own protected and encrypted Virtual Network accross multiple host platforms.