Virtualization and high availability requirements

Mission-critical operations in both small- and large-scale organizations demand availability—defined as the ability of the user community to access the system—along with dependable recovery from natural or human-made disasters. Virtualization technologies provide a platform for High Availability solutions.

Important: High Availability in MES can be defined as the way to make any of the MES servers available without interruption during production operations.

Virtualization is the creation of an abstracted or simulated—virtual, rather than actual—version of something, such as an operating system, server, network resource, or storage device. Virtualization technology abstracts the hardware from the software, extending the life cycle of a software platform.

In virtualization, a single piece of hardware, such as a server, hosts and coordinates multiple guest operating systems. No guest operating system is aware that it is sharing resources and running on a layer of virtualization software rather than directly on the host hardware. Each guest operating system appears as a complete, hardware-based OS to the applications running on it.

For detailed procedures on how to implement High Availability in a virtual environment with System Platform, refer to the System Platform in a Virtualized Environment Implementation Guide.