NEC is no stranger to high availability computing. Its Fault Tolerant servers, developed in conjunction with Stratus, provide fault tolerance and high availability in hardware. The NEC ExpressCluster software offers clustering capabilities in software that will run on most x86-based servers. The latest version supports both x86-based Linux and Windows Server systems in virtual and physical server environments.

Cluster Is a Cluster Is a Cluster

Clustering software is available at little or no cost for both Windows and Linux environments. The latest iterations of these operating systems include basic support for clustering and fail-over operations. They also support virtualized environments. What they do not offer is the ability to support both operating systems with a single management platform from a single console. The latest release of NEC ExpressCluster does provide support for both of these OSes and does so in virtual, physical or mixed environments.