SQL Server Magazine

With Stratus's integrated service technology, the server constantly monitors itself and contacts the Stratus Customer Assistance Center (CAC) immediately in the event of an exception condition. The server can contact the CAC through a modem or the Internet, and a Stratus service professional can remotely investigate the situation to expedite appropriate service measures.

Stratus offers four different service levels to serve a wide variety of customers. The service offerings range in price from $1000 to $9000 annually. Response, advanced exchange, and emergency service times all go down as the price goes up. The advanced plans provide around-the-clock monitoring and phone support, whereas low-end plans provide phone support for 9 hours per day, 5 days per week. The base system hardware warranty is 3 years and doesn't include onsite or remote access services that are part of the paid-for offerings. The Business Critical Service offering guarantees 100 percent uptime. In the event of downtime, Stratus will reimburse the customer for one month of the service fee. Advertised availability is from 99.99 percent to 99.999 percent.

Setup and Configuration
I quickly read the hardware installation instructions before beginning the easy hardware connection process. You can obtain the ftServer 3210 in either a pedestal or rack-mount configuration, but only the pedestal model provides extra drive bays for tape devices. I spent less than 5 minutes connecting the peripherals and communications cables and firing up the system. You might find it inconvenient that the ftServer 3210 has only USB keyboard and mouse ports. For this reason, the product didn't work with our keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) solution.

To test the ftServer 3210's fault tolerance, I used the default installation of Win2K AS that shipped with the product. If you order the ftServer 3210 without an OS or if you want to reinstall the OS yourself, you can perform an IPL. Whether you or the factory performs the IPL, the IPL loads Win2K AS, Stratus-customized Win2K files, appropriate Microsoft service packs, ftServer 3210 documentation, the ftServer Management Console, and ftServer 3210 software. Because the default installation was suitable for my environment, I spent less than 40 minutes configuring Stratus CAC contact information, thresholds, and alerting before declaring the system ready for production.

How Did It Perform?
To test performance, I pulled out one of each redundant component while executing a stream of Microsoft SQL Server transactions on the system. While I pulled out one CPU module, one power supply, one I/O enclosure, and a selection of redundant disk drives, the server ran as though nothing had happened. Behind the scenes, however, the server had notified the Stratus CAC of the problems it was seeing. Within a half hour, a Stratus service professional contacted me to verify that I was randomly pulling modules out of the server and that a meltdown hadn't occurred. The next day, just as easily as I had removed the modules, I reinserted them one at a time and watched as the system automatically handled their reintroduction and synchronization. The only noticeable signs of action were status LEDs and some extra CPU utilization from reactivating physical disks.

High Availability and Exceptional Support
The adage that says you get what you pay for holds true with the ftServer 3210. It's definitely not the least-expensive solution available, but when server reliability and availability are paramount to the success of your business, you might consider the ftServer 3210 a form of insurance. Stratus provides first-class documentation and support offerings. The lockstep operation offers distinct advantages over clustering, and hot-swappable modules mean that you can replace or upgrade modules without downtime. Including PS/2-style keyboard and mouse ports would make the ftServer 3210 fit into existing KVM solutions more easily. Stratus designed the ftServer 3210 to provide a highly available, stable platform, and the product appears to be up to the task.

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