NEC and Stratus Technologies have teamed to develop a fault tolerant server solution that requires little or no expertise on the part of the IT department to install, configure, and manage. For an enterprise requiring basic fault tolerant systems without spending excessive cash or staff time, these systems provide an option to clustering or other failover mechanisms.

Aimed at the small to mid-sized enterprise, the systems, NEC Express5800 and Stratus ftServer 6200, use the same hardware and are manufactured by NEC. Each company markets these with slightly different options, but both provide a hardware supported failover for applications without application changes or special management.

The entry level NEC Express5800/320Ma, priced starting at $11,999, is described in this note, but the other offerings from NEC and Stratus have expanded capabilities above this unit (and at an increased price).