PolyServe Linux solution offers dramatic cost savings to the corporate data center

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PolyServe, Inc., a provider of data center system software, announced today that it has launched a new generation of system software for corporate data centers. PolyServe Matrix Server enables a 50-percent reduction in total cost of ownership by allowing groups of low-cost, Intel-based servers to replace high-cost, proprietary servers running mission-critical applications.
Past attempts to use industry standard servers in mission-critical environments have been limited by three factors: the inability of multiple servers to concurrently read and write the same data; the difficulty of meeting availability requirements for mission-critical applications; and the complexity of managing large groups of servers. Matrix Server addresses these limitations and facilitates a more efficient computing architecture that PolyServe calls “matrix computing.”

“Matrix Server provides the first highly scalable, fully symmetric cluster file system available on Intel processors – a promise made by many, but delivered by no one, until now,” said Mike Stankey, president and chief executive officer of PolyServe.

PolyServe Matrix Server software binds a cluster of Intel-based servers into a highly flexible centrally managed server farm. This new file system, which is fully integrated with PolyServe’s proven high availability software, PolyServe Matrix HA, enables multiple Intel-based servers to read and write to the same files in a storage area network (SAN) and achieve the fault tolerance of expensive proprietary systems — all while being cost-effectively managed as a unified whole.

The highly resilient SAN-based file system ensures that the failure of a single server or application does not affect access to data formerly owned by that server. Centralized management enables customers to install and maintain application configurations and files in a single file system where they can be shared by multiple servers. Databases, business applications or infrastructure components are installed once, configured and maintained in one place, and made available to many servers by pointing servers to the files on a SAN.

Matrix Server is specifically designed to integrate well with Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, Oracle’s clustered database technology. Other enterprise applications supported by Matrix Server include general database fail over and maintenance, file serving, messaging, application servers and Web servers.

“The ability to manage a massive database application as a single file, across multiple industry standard servers running different operating systems is the holy grail CIOs have been waiting for,” said Arun Taneja, Senior Analyst, The Enterprise Storage Group. “Harnessing and managing multiple servers as a single pool of computing power is a giant step towards that goal.”

“Give any CIO the choice of buying and servicing expensive UNIX servers for their data centers, or getting better scalability and performance from a PolyServe-enabled industry standard server combination, at half the price, and the decision is a no-brainer,” said Mike Prince, CIO of Burlington Coat Factory.

Higher Server Utilization through Increased Flexibility
Treating multiple servers as a unified logical pool of computing power gives corporations the ability to respond quickly to changing application needs. New servers and applications can easily be added to the pool using Matrix Server. The software also gives customers the flexibility of re-purposing servers. For example, servers that might be used for processing credit card transactions during the day can be re-purposed within seconds to perform analytical number crunching at night.

Same Reliability as High-end UNIX SMP Systems
Matrix Server offers the same reliability as high-end SMP systems to a cluster of standard servers by supporting automatic failover and failback, eliminating single points of failure and enabling multiple backup configurations. This capability is delivered by PolyServe Matrix HA, an easy-to-use high-availability software product that is also available separately.

PolyServe Matrix Server is now available on Linux and will be released on the Microsoft Windows platform in the first quarter of 2003.

About PolyServe, Inc.
Based in San Francisco, Calif., with a development center in Beaverton, Ore., PolyServe provides system software products that enable customers to create flexible server farms with standard Intel-based servers attached to networked storage. PolyServe has attracted approximately $43 million in investment led by Greylock, New Enterprise Associates and The Roda Group. To learn more about matrix computing, see PolyServe’s Matrix Computing white paper available on our website at www.polyserve.com.

NOTE: PolyServe is a trademark of PolyServe, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between PolyServe and any other company.