Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has launched the Datacenter High Availability Program for Windows Server 2003, due for launch on April 24. The program targets five-nines availability, or 99.999% uptime, Microsoft said.
Microsoft attempted to achieve similar levels of uptime for its most recent server operating system under a similar program. The company launched the Datacenter Program in September 2000, for 99.9% greater uptime in the data center edition of Windows 2000.
Company vice president of the Windows Server Group, Bill Veghte, said in a statement this week that customers had experienced three-nines availability out of the box in Windows 2000, and that Microsoft wanted to go beyond this.
The Datacenter High Availability Program again includes certified, pre-tested OEM configurations with support-center options and services.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has tweaked Windows Server 2003 to iron-out potential application-based crashes. Application process isolation segregates applications so one application crash does not impact another application’s performance while application cycling in Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 is designed to alleviate system failures due to memory leaks.
Other changes include memory mirroring to enable fast failover and new clustering that allows Windows 2003 servers to be set-up remotely without re-booting.
Source: Computerwire
