McAfee alliance offers 'failsafe' clustering

McAfee, a division of Network Associates, has joined server and load-balancing software company PolyServe to offer what it claims are "failsafe software" solutions for data centres.

McAfee, a division of Network Associates (NA), has joined server and load-balancing software company PolyServe to offer what it claims are "failsafe software" solutions for data centres.

According to McAfee, the partnership will offer NA resellers the chance to provide customers with an affordable software solution for maximum server availability, scalability and reliability.

NA will market the new McAfee Understudy and LocalCluster products through resellers, distributors and systems integrators. The two products will be available for Solaris, NT and Linux platforms through Ideal Hardware, McAfee's sole UK partner.

Marc Vos, European retail product marketing manager at NA, said: "We are the first company to offer this type of software to the UK market. We plan to extend our channel availability, but we have gone for the safer route through Ideal until the product is established in the UK."

Both products allow corporate users, service providers and ecommerce sites to build clusters of servers that handle multiple client service requests, he said, adding that the software is designed for firms ranging from small companies up to large enterprises with web-based applications. The products boast failure detection services and IP service monitoring.

Diane Seghposs, vice president of global channel marketing at NA, said: "This will be the first software-only server solution that can run on any operating system in today's internet data centres."

Understudy and LocalCluster will be sold in two, four and 10 server packs, with prices ranging from £659.95 to £1299.95.