Enterprise Communications Featured Article

Fault tolerance is like insurance. It is often overlooked until it is needed, and smart businesses make sure they are never without it.

As technology plays an increasingly large role in the success or failure of any business, having proper fault tolerance in place for unified communications systems gains importance. For most businesses, downtime or lost database records are just not an option.

For Mavis Discount Tire, a fast-growing independent retailer with 160 stories spread throughout New York State, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, proper fault tolerance has been crucial.

"We have a lot of database-driven applications and we have an enormous need for redundancy," noted Edward Schwartz in a recent CIO Insight article, CIO for Mavis. "So, it was important to build an IT framework that supports our need for performance.”

Ensuring that it had the necessary protection, the company has implemented Microsoft (News - Alert) Cluster Server so if any server fails, another automatically takes over. This keeps its various services operating around the clock, and with the needed fault tolerance.

Mavis Discount Tire also uses SIOS Technology's SANless clustering software for its business-critical MS SQL Server applications and databases. The solution relies on local storage instead of a storage-area-network (SAN), and it delivers real-time replication of data for better synchronization and failover.

Because of the technology, the company can move 10 servers and split them between two locations easily as needed.

Whether backend databases or enterprise phone systems, businesses need to keep fault tolerance in mind and choose solutions that can deliver on this security.

Tadiran’s (News - Alert) Aeonix unified communications platform, for instance, delivers resiliency by being able to operate with one or more unified communications servers but have each server provide complete application functionality. In a clustered environment, automated diagnostics and recovery mechanisms enable Aeonix to deliver high levels of fault tolerance and failover, ensuring that businesses don’t have critical communications cut.

At the same time, Aeonix is a scalable solution that allows businesses to buy and install only what they currently need, adding users, remote locations and additional applications as necessary while still retaining the control and security of an on-premise UC solution.

These are the details that matter when it comes to fault tolerance, and businesses would be wise to pay attention.