The OST difference:
- OST is laser focused on server consolidation via virtualization
- OST features senior level depth on all major operating systems and SAN infrastructures
- OST is current on all major server and storage management tools
- OST can virtualize your entire infrastructure – not just Vmware on Windows. OST has extensive experience in enterprise accounts with Sun Solaris Containers, HP/UX Virtual Server Environment (VSE), and AIX Virtualization Engine.
- OST’s approach lends itself to helping our customers determine the lowest cost, lowest risk and most robust solution for their environments (Our goal is not to perpetuate consulting engagements by increasing complexity)
- OST has the highest levels of technical certification for VMware and related complimentary third party products like PlateSpin, Vizioncore, etc
- OST has a wealth of technical resources that have been on both sides of the desk which affords our customers the opportunity to receive an objective approach to any solution
- OST is the largest small company you’ll ever have the pleasure of working with, our cost structure provides us with the advantage of being able to offer very competitive rates for world class services (in engagements like this it is not uncommon for OST to compete with monolithic IT Services players – the difference is – our customer satisfaction is close to 100%)
HIGH AVAILABILITY CLUSTERING
They don’t have big TV awards shows for our industry. No red carpet for the tech guys. We’ve come to terms with this. But if we were famous, it would be for the breadth of High Availability Clustering solutions we’ve designed and implemented over the years. We excel in delivering the highest level of quality in the HA world.
Of course, HA isn’t the only component of systems availability; it needs to serve the entire business process. End users don’t care about why their application isn’t working, just that it is or isn’t. We have a thorough, detailed methodology to evaluate the big picture.
HA Success Story: We tackled a massive project for Amway, a Fortune 500 company in need of an IBM HACMP solution. We planned it. We implemented it. And then we basked in IBM’s silence when they came to audit our solution and said, “Complete approval – no suggestions.” We slept well that night.
In addition to server failover within datacenters, OST has extensive experience with clustering between sites using software based remote data replication products such as Quest Shareplex, Oracle, Veritas Volume Replicator, and GoldenGate and array based remote data replication products such as SRDF, MirrorView, Continuous Access, and others. We have customers who failover to their disaster recovery sites for maintenance purposes and also customers who use disaster recovery servers for production applications.
OST has senior level skills in designing and implementing the following high availability clustering (system failover) solutions:
- IBM HACMP
- HP ServiceGuard
- Veritas Cluster Server
- Oracle RAC (Real Applications Cluster)
- Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS)
OST has developed custom scripts for many applications which allows for quicker implementation times. Enterprise software applications that OST offers specific clustering solutions for include:
- Epic
- SAP
- Oracle Applications
- Baan
- JD Edwards
- PeopleSoft
- Dynamics AX
OST realizes that High Availability Clustering is just one component of systems availability. Availability must be broadly considered as meeting the service level for the entire business process. When architecting data centers for availability OST considers all areas of availability including the following:
- Power and Facilities
- Hardware – redundant systems
- Physical Infrastructure – power, cooling, etc.
- Network – redundant NICs, cabling, switches
- Disk – mirrored disk, RAID, Volume, file system management
- SAN – redundant SAN switches, cabling, HBAs, multipathing
- WAN – facilities, diverse routing, multiple paths, multiple carriers
- Cluster software
- Multiple App Servers with Load Balancing or Application Brokers, Secure Messaging Infrastructure
- Event Monitoring
- Network Services (DNS, NFS, WAN, NIS, etc.)
- Administrative Test Systems
- Backup and Recovery
- Data Replication
The following chart is useful when calculating the number hours or days of downtime based on annual uptime percentages. For example, when a vendor claims “5 nines” of uptime it equates to 5 minutes and 25 seconds of downtime per year.
| Uptime Percentage |
Downtime Percentage |
Downtime per Year |
Downtime per Week |
| 98 | 2 | 7.3 days | 3.3 hours |
| 99 | 1 | 3.65 days | 1.7 hours |
| 99.9 | 0.1 | 8.75 hours | 10.1 min |
| 99.99 | 0.01 | 52.5 min | 1 min |
| 99.999 | 0.001 | 5.25 min | 6 sec |
| 99.9999 | 0.0001 | 31.50 sec | .6 sec |
OST can also assist in decisions regarding server platforms, storage platforms and virtualization software choices. Reinforcing our role as a server platforms expert, OST will soon be releasing a book on blades entitled, “The Case for Blade Servers – Maximize Efficiencies in the Data Center”. This book will also include discussions around consolidation and virtualization. Our goal is for it to become the leading technical resource on these topics in the industry. On the storage front, OST was named as the second fastest growing storage focused IT solution provider in America in 2005 and was named to CRN’s Fast Growth 100 fastest growing solution IT solution providers in America for 2006 and 2007. Storage is an integral component when implementing virtualization and consolidation.
