White Papers

• Virtualization
• Server Virtualization and Cloud Computing: Four Hidden Impacts on Uptime and Availability (PDF, 188K)
• Cloud computing allows companies to use IT resources as a service, taking advantage of shared applications, processing and storage managed within the cloud -- either inside a private cloud at an internal data center, or in an external cloud at a service provider. Greater robustness of the virtualized servers supporting this new IT model will ensure a resilient cloud infrastructure capable of delivering “on-demand” access to users.
• 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 83K)
• 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.
• Business Continuity
• High Availability: Is it Sufficient for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity? (PDF, 245K)
• A closer look at what's behind the push towards continuous IT availability.
  
  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.
• Managed Services
• What to Look for in Mission-Critical Managed IT Services (PDF, 205K)
• What's your exposure to losing business capability? Use this paper as your field guide to identify key characteristics that set critical managed IT services apart from even highly-capable general-purpose offerings.

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.
• Banking
• 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.
  
• Healthcare
• 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.
• Manufacturing
• 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.
• 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).
• Public Sector
• 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

Position Papers

• IT Availability
• Five Ways to Help Your Business Survive The Economic Downturn (PDF, 180K)
• There's never been a better time to enhance IT operations with technologies that can help you navigate the current economic downturn and emerge in a stronger position to innovate and grow. This paper explores five immediate, affordable steps you can take to reduce IT costs and improve profitability.
• Closing the IT Availability Gap: New Options for Traditional and Virtualized IT Environments (PDF, 369K)
• 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
• Electronic Health Records That Make the Grade — 24/7 Availability (PDF, 248K)
• The economic stimulus package promises to jump-start wide-spread adoption of electronic medical records. What are the risks when clinicians can't access EHRs? How far reaching are the consequences when data is lost or compromised? Explore the critical role of EHRs and learn how to enable resilient systems that deliver maximum uptime — automatically.
• 24/7 Uptime for Electronic Health Records: Microsoft Windows-based EHRs and Stratus Medical-Grade Servers (PDF, 167K)
• Organizations implementing Windows-based Electronic Health Records need to pay the same close attention to the availability of their underlying IT infrastructure that they give to the selection of their EHR software. This paper introduces IT solutions with built-in 24/7 uptime protection that caregivers and patients can depend on.
  
• 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, 169K)
• 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.
  
  
• 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
    • Ensure Mission-Critical Service Levels in VMware vSphere Environments (PDF 208K)
    • Continuous, high or "on -demand" availability — the choice is yours. The coupling of two industry-leading technologies — VMware vSphere and Stratus ftServer systems — gives IT managers a flexible, robust solution that delivers mission-critical SLAs along with the full benefits of virtualization.
      
    • Achieve Continuous Availability for Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 (PDF 268K)
    • Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 simplifies deployment, operation and IT integration for high-performance computing at a price point that allows smaller companies and individual departments to successfully deploy HPC applications. Stratus ftServer systems, with automatic continuous uptime, are the easiest and most effective way to protect critical HPC Server components — the head node, broker node and file node — from failure.
      
    • Stratus Continuous Processing Technology for Microsoft Windows Environments (PDF, 740K)
    • 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.