FullTime Software Inc has released Version 4.2 of its FullTime Cluster service level availabiity software. Having been acquired last October, the company is in the process of becoming a clustering business unit within its new owner Legato. FullTime Cluster version 4.2 will thus be available through Legato dealers. While it now sports a central repository for scripts, network isolation detection and a single system image for easy central administration, the upgrade is chiefly significant for adding support for two new platforms: HP-UX and NT Alpha.
We’ve had quite a bit of interest on HP in particular, says director of product management Kelly Polanski, and our customers see Alpha systems as more scalable. The result of adding the two, she says, is that FullTime Cluster is now available on a strategic set of platforms. That said, hard data on customer numbers is hard to come by. We hesitate to assign numbers because this is a relatively recent entry into the clustering market, hedges Polanski. FullTime Cluster was originally released on NT in July and Solaris in September, and the company reckons it now has about half a dozen sites.
Those numbers may have been artificially depressed by the merger. With the announcement of the Legato acquisition, there was some concern about whether we would continue with product line and expertise, says Polanski. We’re absolutely doing that. In future, customers and potential customers can expect to see more releases, particularly on Unix. We feel that the NT market has been quicker to pick up on this, Polanski says. That’s because clustering can do more for NT: We’re a few generations ahead on NT, but on Unix, we’re only one generation ahead.
Of course the fastest-growing Unix-like operating system, Linux, has its own clustering software in the shape of Beowulf. That won’t necessarily deter FullTime from porting to Linux in future. We have had a lot of questions and conversations about Linux and what we have said is that if the market demands it, we will support it, Polanski explains. It probably will be supported as one of the first platforms after we support all of the platforms we’re committed to.
FullTime Cluster is available through a tiered pricing model, from $3000 per server on lowest end up to $36,000 per server for E10000 servers from Sun. You would need at least two of these licenses, Polanski notes. We also sell a Pilot, which is an incentive price wrapped around four licenses for Cluster, four for FullTime Data, one for our SDK and certain consulting services. That package is available for between $20,000 and $145,000, again, depending on hardware.
