– Brad Rupp, senior software engineer, SuperLumin Networks (www.superlumin.com), says:
Today’s businesses are searching for ways to reduce costs, yet maintain reliable access to critical Web and cloud-based applications—even in the event of server hardware failure. Recently, SuperLumin Networks, a leading provider of scalable, high-performance media proxy and acceleration solutions, announced support for bypass NICs from Interface Masters.
Designed to provide maximum uptime for networks, SuperLumin Nemesis’ new fault tolerance capability offers a lower-cost alternative to expensive layer 4 switches and routers. Specifically, SuperLumin supports the Niagara n22xxed series NICs in SuperLumin Nemesis version 2.2, build 3446 and later.
Our partnership with Interface Masters allows SuperLumin to provide a low cost, high availability solution to our small business customers. In a nutshell, the Niagara NIC provides bypass capabilities in the event of a power failure, loss of heartbeat or other general server failure. If the server fails for any reason, the Niagara NIC will go into bypass mode, allowing all Ethernet traffic to flow through the NIC. While customers lose the caching capabilities that the SuperLumin Nemesis software provides, end users will see no loss of service.
As an example, assume I have a SuperLumin Nemesis server configured to provide caching of YouTube videos. This service alone provides a significant reduction in bandwidth usage, while allowing my end users to receive a better experience. Videos are delivered faster and at a higher bit rate, all while reducing upstream bandwidth usage to my ISP.
Now, suppose the server running SuperLumin Nemesis fails. In most cases, the end user’s ability to access YouTube would fail as well. With the addition of a Niagara NIC, this is not the case. The Niagara NIC will automatically go into bypass mode which connects the two ports of the NIC together, allowing all Ethernet traffic to continue to flow. End users can continue to access YouTube, although the service would be degraded due to the loss of caching provided by SuperLumin Nemesis.
We all know there are many ways to provide high availability. Each solution is a tradeoff between cost and the number of ‘9’s we get of uptime. With the inclusion of a Niagara NIC in a SuperLumin Nemesis server, I can continue to provide access to my end users even if the server fails.
Far beyond the fault tolerance capability of SuperLumin Nemesis, we are recognized as one of the leaders within the caching market. SuperLumin Nemesis provides a rich feature set of access control rules, firewall and packet filter support, and authentication to LDAP, RADIUS, and NTLM back ends.
Those interested in a 45 day trial of SuperLumin Nemesis can download the ISO, documentation and a trial license at http://www.superlumin.com/knowledge_center/.
