High Availability - "MC Service Guard"

[Vasudev Nagarajan]

I am currently examining a proposal by our supplier. We need to decide whether the High-availability software component "MC Service Guard" is a middleware or merely extension of the OS that supports High-availability. This determines who pays for what between customer and supplier. I am seeking advice, opinion from the experts as to what they think this is. I normally consider any High-Availability software that closely integrates with the OS and provides a seamless fail-over to databases and applications as an extension of OS (e.g. cluster software on the old VAX VMS machines - though the fail-over is never seamless on the VAXes). Essentially if the "MC Service Guard" detects failure of HW, OS or other components and facilitates fail-over to another machine and it is well integrated with the OS, then I consider this as an extension of the OS to provide a High-availability configuration. Middleware is typically not well integrated with the OS and bridges specific applications to various OS, e.g. Tuxedo.

Any feedback or help is appreciated. All I am seeking is an unbiased view.

Regards
Vasudev Nagarajan

[Patrick Wessel · Accepted solution]

HP refers to MC ServiceGuard as middleware. Check out the following web-pages:
http://www.unixsolutions.hp.com/5nines_brochure.html
http://www.unixsolutions.hp.com/ha_090999.html
http://www.unixsolutions.hp.com/solutions/mc/ha_brochure.html
http://www.hp.com/ssg/mcsol/overview_manageability.html

[melvyn burnard]

Well MC/ServiceGuard is really considered as Middleware by HP and by most people I know.
Certainly when I teach it we refer to it as middleware.
Having said that, I suppose you could also call it an extension of the OS, although as it adds nothing into the kernel, this is not really true.
I believe it would be a good start to read the manuals pointed to by Patrick.