The Rest of the Wolves

To paraphrase the old E. F. Hutton commercial, when Microsoft talks, other vendors listen. Mindful of the importance of open specifications and industry-standard hardware, Microsoft enlisted a group of technology partners to assist in Wolfpack's early development: Compaq, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, NCR, and Tandem. Digital, in particular, was a key player. Microsoft licensed Digital's clustering source code, which forms the heart of Wolfpack.

All but Intel plan to distribute Wolfpack-based clust ers. Amdahl, Siemens Nixdorf, and Stratus Computer have announced plans to certify and offer Wolfpack clusters this year. Comput er Associates, Oracle, and SAP have publicly discussed plans for Wolfpack-enabled products.

Once Microsoft releases Wolfpack, Digital will no longer sell its Clusters for NT package. Digital's customers will migrate to Wolfpack, which Digital will support with an enhancement package that includes increased scalability, disaster tolerance, and administrative tools.

Veritas plans to make FirstWatch as compatible with Wolfpack as possible, although some Wolfpack application- and device-dependency issues don't apply.

Isis, a division of Stratus Computer, offers Isis Availability Manager, which currently supports up to 100 servers, a capability far beyond Wolfpack. Nonetheless, Isis is committed to Wolfpack as its strategic API for clustering and maintaining compatibility with NT-based solutions. Thus, Stratus's Radio Cluster users will have an easy migration path to future Wolfpack-based products.

NCR sees its LifeKeeper, with extensive capabilities in both Unix and NT environments, as its premium high-availability enterprise offering, and considers the more-focused Wolfpack an entry-level offering.

Octopus Technologies offers a data-mirroring system that can work with Wolfpack as well as provide an alternative, stand-alone fault-tolerant solution for NT environments. Also, Octopus works in one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many configurations, not just Wolfpack's initial one-to-one. Octopus will support all Wolfpack APIs as they become available. Some users may choose Wolfpack to implement local clusters and use Octopus to provide data mirroring and failover between clusters--in other words, cluster clustering.

Soon, Compaq expects to introduce a multiserver failover system with full Wolfpack functionality, additional administrative tools, and Fibre Channel-attached external storage. Vinca plans to improve its Standby Server for NT by adding advanced features and Wolfpack compatibility. At the same time, Vinca is developing Wolfpack enhancements, utilities, and cluster-aware applications, allowing its customers a future migration to Wolfpack.