Cloud Lock Step

  View the VMware Fault Tolerance Demonstration Video

Maximise application uptime and reduce downtime management costs by enabling Cloud Lock Step for your Cloud Servers. Using VMware Fault Tolerance, based on vLockstep technology, provides zero downtime, zero data loss continuous availability for your applications, without the cost and complexity of traditional hardware or software clustering solutions. 

Traditionally to achieve this level of availability required either fault tolerant servers or software clustering.  Fault tolerant servers have been in use for several decades but are generally adopted for only the most mission-critical applications.

Software clustering generally requires a standby server with a configuration identical to that of the active server. The standby must have a second copy of all system and application software, potentially doubling licensing costs. A failure causes a short interruption of service that disrupts ongoing transactions while control is transferred to the standby.

Cloud Lock Step delivers hardware style fault tolerance to Cloud Servers. It requires neither custom hardware nor custom software. Guest operating systems and applications do not require modifications or reconfiguration. In fact, they remain unaware of the protection transparently delivered by the hypervisor.

With Cloud Lock Step enabled, primary and secondary Cloud Servers remain completely in sync, with lag times of only a few milliseconds. 

In the event of a primary Cloud Server failure, the Secondary continues with the workload instantaneously – a new secondary Cloud Server will then be automatically created which will continue to run in lock step.

Lock stepped Cloud Servers run in separate datacentres giving cost effective geographic resilience which mitigates the risk of virtually all datacentre outages.

  Download the Cloud Lock Step Datasheet