Connecting Clusters–Introducing the Global Cluster Option

VCS provides the option of connecting clusters to provide wide-area failover and disaster recovery. Previously, the wide-area functionality was included in a separate product, "Global Cluster Manager." It has now been incorporated into VCS, enabling global clustering that moves beyond simple clustering to wide-area failover management.

Local clustering provides local failover for each site or building. Campus and replicated cluster configurations offer some degree of protection against disasters affecting limited geographic regions. But, these configurations do not provide protection against large-scale disasters such as major floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes that cause outages for an entire city or region. The entire cluster could be affected by such an outage.

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In such situations, data availability can be ensured by migrating applications to remote clusters located considerable distances apart.