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If you need your data to be available in all your offices—even if the central office goes up in smoke one day—Radiant Datas new PeerFS 4.0, which now supports multiple 64-bit Linuxes, might be just what you need.
Available since 2003 for 32-bit Linux systems, PeerFS uses a multiple-sources and multiple-targets replicating file system to try to deliver seamless, consistent access to data. PeerFS enables simultaneous transactions on multiple servers in multiple locations, with separate but identical data stores that are continuously synchronized using a peer-to-peer approach.
To maintain quick response, READ operations are performed locally, without tying up network bandwidth. Only the changed bytes within a file are sent over the network as WRITE operations keep the file systems in sync. In the event of a storage failure, PeerFS maintains HA (high availability) by providing a seamless failover to alternative data stores.
To make sure someone isnt copying your data, PeerFS 4.0 provides 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encrypted connections. The AES link is configurable for each endpoint.
Radiant Data claims that in addition to adding support for 64-bit platforms—including RHEL 4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Ubuntu 6.10 and Fedora Core 6—this new versions file system performance has been improved by 40 percent. According to the company, this means users will see the same performance theyre used to seeing with commonly used file systems that dont provide the benefits of real-time, continuous data replication. Additionally, NFS (Network File System) interoperability has been enhanced to be more seamless and foolproof.
Radiant Data Vice President and general manager Robert Peverley stated, “Our customers have been steadily migrating to 64-bit environments and have wanted to bring PeerFS along with them. We wanted to deliver on this need, of course, but also to deliver a more robust, no-compromise solution in the process—for both 64-bit and 32-bit environments. Continuous data availability is what PeerFS has always been about. Now PeerFS users will achieve the automated replication benefits they require without compromising file system performance.”