Eternal Actively Replicates FT Net Software

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(04/23/02, 02:21:57 AM EDT)

Santa Barbara, Ca. --- Building on a decade or more of university research, Eternal Systems Inc. has developed a lightweight, easy to implement fault tolerant active replication architecture that will allow distributed computing systems to recover quickly and seamlessly without significant impact on software operation.

The company has just released two new products --- NIFTI and FT/CORBA --- which add additional levels of fault tolerance and resilience to distributed systems built using the Common Object Request Broker Architecture in critical embedded network and communications applications where continuous availability of both hardware and software is an absolute requirement.

According to Tom Laux, president of Eternal Systems, the initial target for the products are in embedded telecom applications in routers, switches and central office control centers as well as mission and safety critical applications in military and aerospace.

"Eventually, however, we see this technology moving out into broader segments of the market in the middle level support of wireless iAppliances, the merged network/telecom Voice Over IP data centers and any distributed environment in which the health and operation of any one element is critical to the entire system as a whole," he said. "Nor is the technology necessarily tied to CORBA. We see it being deployed in almost any web services framework, regardless of underlying language or structure: Java-based ones from Sun, IBM and others or C-sharp/.NET implementations based on the Microsoft approach.

Designed for distributed, multi-tiered, embedded computing environments, Eternal Systems FT/ORB 2.0 includes thinFT, etGateway, etConsole and etEngine components for quickly implementing fault-tolerant solutions in a broad range of distributed embedded computer environments.

NIFTI (for fault tolerant notification and information transfer) is a featherweight, high-performance, non-intrusive fault detector/notifier solution, designed for use in highly scaleable, distributed environments in which it is necessary to manage the operation and interaction of hundreds to thousands of distributed processors and actively detect and manage faulty or failed processors, eliminating the need for cumbersome, expensive implementations.

Both are available for a variety of middleware and operating system platforms, including OMG CORBA, Java, VxWorks, Linux and Unix.

FT/ORB 2.0 is available now for the Highlander VisiBroker Real-Time ORB running on the VxWorks operating system and for the Vertel e*ORB running on Linux. NIFTI software is available now for various embedded environments, including Linux and VxWorks. For more technical and pricing information, go to http://www.eternal-systems.com.