Stratus ztC Endurance: Features, Benefits, and How it works

Stratus ztC Endurance™

Imagine an organization’s crucial applications – the lifeblood of their operations – suddenly going offline. Downtime can mean severe disruptions, revenue loss, and even reputational damage. This is especially true in industries relying on continuous operations, where even seconds of downtime can have a significant impact. Enter the Stratus ztC Endurance platform: a robust solution designed to keep essential applications running seamlessly with zero data loss, whether at the edge or in data centers. How does it achieve this? Through intelligent fault tolerance, automated uptime management, and a resilient architecture that prioritizes reliability.

In this article, we’ll dive into the Stratus ztC Endurance platform, exploring its core features, key benefits, and how it supports mission-critical applications across industries.

Stratus ztC Endurance Overview and Messaging

Stratus ztC Endurance™ Positioning 

Stratus ztC Endurance is an innovative new family of fault tolerant computing platforms that enable intelligent predictive failover and 99.99999% application and data availability. This family of platforms evolves from Stratus’ proven combination of built-in fault tolerance, proactive health monitoring, and unmatched serviceability. The ztC Endurance, together with its Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange™, delivers the predictable, protected performance needed by today and tomorrow’s data center and edge environments by leveraging Intel RAS capabilities, embedded hardware and software security, and increased manageability and serviceability via a modular architecture. 

Stratus ztC Endurance

What it is 

Stratus ztC Endurance is an intelligent, predictive fault tolerant computing platform in a 2U form factor, available in entry-level, midrange, and high-performance configurations, for running mission critical software applications. The platforms incorporate high-performance, industry-standard components, including 4th generation Intel Xeon CPUs, high-speed networking, zero failure rate (Zefr) memory, and solid state NVMe storage. 

What it does 

Stratus ztC Endurance enables organizations to run critical applications without downtime or data loss, in edge or data center environments, using intelligent, predictive fault tolerance that leverages Stratus’ unique combination of redundant hardware design, hardened drivers, and Stratus Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange. The platform delivers built-in fault tolerance that is transparent to standard operating systems and hosted applications, does not require additional scripting or modification, provides a single system image to users, and offers proactive health monitoring to simplify support and maintenance while in operation. This is accomplished within a more modular architecture for greater serviceability and power to meet the needs of next-generation, sustainable operations. This family of fault tolerant platforms is another advance by Stratus in providing simple, protected and autonomous computing.

Key Stratus Messages  

  • Simple – Stratus ztC Endurance simplifies how organizations achieve 99.99999% availability of critical applications with built-in fault tolerance, enables management by OT or IT staff, and allows consolidation of multiple workloads on a single platform, reducing complexity and cost. 
  • Protected – Stratus ztC Endurance mitigates operational, financial, and reputational risk by ensuring “always on” availability, eliminating application downtime or data loss, while securing data and applications from cyber threats. 
  • Autonomous– Stratus ztC Endurance runs critical applications autonomously without downtime or human intervention and allows remote management from centralized locations. The platform is uniquely engineered to be self-healing and to provide predictive, proactive health monitoring that identifies and resolves potential issues before they occur.

Who it’s for 

The Stratus ztC Endurance platform is designed to meet the critical application needs of both OT and IT teams. 

For IT leaders responsible for deploying and managing IT platforms to support complex business operations at the edge or the data center, Stratus ztC Endurance delivers 99.99999% uptime and fault tolerance that is transparent to users, applications and operating systems, eliminating the need for additional scripting or modifications. 

For OT leaders investing in new automation programs that require Edge Computing platforms to run complex, Industry 4.0 software stacks, Stratus ztC Endurance ensures the continuous availability of critical applications running at the edge, the micro data center and the operations center with 99.99999% uptime, making it easy for OT teams to install, manage and service, enabling the rapid transformation of computing infrastructure to modernize operations and deploy advanced software stacks

Stratus ztC Endurance Delivers Innovation in Five Key Areas of Performance:

Predictive – ztC Endurance introduces intelligent predictive fault tolerance through the Stratus Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange, which tracks and targets a wider range of failure points than other standalone and hyperconverged solutions. ztC Endurance also automatically takes corrective actions to address and resolve issues before they impact operations. 

Protected – ztC Endurance ensures data integrity and protects against loss of in-flight application data with 7 nines (99.99999%) application system availability and delivers embedded hardware and software security features, along with the ability to run third-party cybersecurity applications, to protect IT and OT assets. 

Manageable – An open system, ztC Endurance simplifies manageability with remote monitoring capabilities and management APIs that are interoperable with existing IT tools and systems familiar to IT teams. Additionally, ztC Endurance and its fault tolerant architecture support standard, off-theshelf operating systems without modification. To ease deployment and management, ztC Endurance provides a single system image which makes its redundancy transparent to applications, eliminating the need for additional scripting or modifications. 

Serviceable – ztC Endurance’s redundant, modular architecture features four (4) pairs of customer replaceable units (CRUs) – compute, I/O, power supply unit, and storage – that are hot-swappable by OT or IT without specialized expertise or tools to deliver uptime and efficient operation. 

Performance – ztC Endurance incorporates the latest technology, notably 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” processors, high speed NVMe, and resilient, high-performance DDR5 memory to deliver new levels of performance matched with fault tolerance required to consolidate mission-critical applications as well as run complex software stacks and advanced applications.    

Stratus ztC Endurance System Architecture

Stratus ztC Endurance System Architecture – Hardware

Highly Serviceable Modular Design 

The ztC Endurance is a critical applications platform designed to deliver both high performance and fault tolerance in a single system. Building upon the redundant customer replaceable units (CRUs) offered in the previous generation Stratus ftServer®, the ztC Endurance architecture offers an even more serviceable and redundant modular design. Instead of replacing the entire set of system components in one CRU when a component fails, ztC Endurance comprises four pairs (eight total) of CRU modules: 

  • Compute module 
  • I/O module 
  • Storage module 
  • Power supply unit (PSU) 

This modular architecture improves the process to hot-swap out failed components by allowing the user to remove the only failed module and replace with a new healthy unit, while leaving the remaining modules connected and running. This ensures the availability of system resources at all times and simplifies the process to replace a failed component, further enabling nontechnical staff to replace modules as needed. 

Compute Module 

The first type of CRU module in the ztC Endurance server is the compute module. Each ztC Endurance contains two identical, hot-swappable compute modules that are inserted / removed from the front of the system chassis. The compute module is a self-contained unit that includes a motherboard, processors, and memory. Additionally, each compute module includes a local M.2 NVMe solid state disk drive (known as the standby boot device), cooling fans, and multiple internal sensors for system health monitoring.

Stratus ztC Endurance System Architecture - Hardware

I/O Module 

The second type of CRU module in the ztC Endurance is the I/O Module. There are two identical, hot-swappable I/O modules that are inserted / removed from the rear of the system chassis. Each I/O module is a self-contained unit that includes embedded network interfaces (two 10 Gb copper and one 1 Gb copper) and 5 PCIe peripheral slots, which allow each ztC Endurance I/O module to support up to 5 PCIe devices. The 1 Gb copper interface port is used exclusively for a system management port; it communicates to the user interface, the ActiveService Network (ASN) to call home, deliver email alerts, adds remote access to the BMC (baseboard management controller), and reports health monitoring status. The I/O modules utilize the latest industry standard PCIe Gen4 interfaces, which increases internal communication throughput and supplies maximum performance for the I/O subsystem.

Within each I/O module is a PCIe switch which can be configured online to allow the I/O module to be connected to either of the compute modules in the system. Each I/O module also includes temperature sensors and voltage sensors for system health monitoring. Additionally, the I/O modules support independent power control of the embedded network adapters and of each of the PCIe peripheral device slots for use in failure recovery operations.

Storage Module 

The storage module is the third type of CRU module in the ztC Endurance server. There are two identical, customer replaceable, hot-swappable storage modules, each containing up to six hot-swappable NVMe solid state disk drives. Each storage module must be populated with identical disk drive arrangements in terms of the number of disk drives, the capacity of the disk drives, etc. PCIe fabric configured in each storage module is always connected to the active compute module during normal system operation. RAID 1 software drivers running on the customer’s operating system mirror the corresponding disk drives between the storage modules to provide the system’s storage and data redundancy. System management in the ztC Endurance enables the mirrored pairs of disk drives to be configured at initial server deployment or to be re-configured in the field while the system is in operation. 

ztC Endurance achieves availability of data by providing full storage redundancy between the corresponding disk drives in the two storage modules; the disk drives and storage modules operate in an active / active configuration, meaning that data is written to both drives at the same time. Since the data is fully duplicated at all times, it is still always available in the event of a disk failure.

Power Supply Unit (PSU) 

The Power Supply Unit (PSU) is the final type of CRU module in the ztC Endurance. The two identical, hot-swappable Power Supply Units (PSUs) can be inserted or removed from the rear of the system chassis and are completely redundant. This redundancy is attained by allocating the two PSUs to a common internal power distribution system, rather than to certain internal components, subsystems, or modules. This allows an entire ztC Endurance server to be powered by either PSU, so that if one PSU fails, the remaining unit will continue to power the system. 

Additional Customer Replaceable Components 

The hot-swappable CRU modules make the ztC Endurance easier to service, enabling non-technical users to Within the CRU modules, there are certain components that the customer may replace with Stratus parts as outlined in the table below. This allows the customer to replace a failed component or add or upgrade an existing component without requiring field or factory service. To replace a customer replaceable component, the customer must remove the CRU module that contains the component and swap out the part. The customer may also replace the chassis by removing all modules from the original chassis and loading them into the new chassis.

 Customer Replaceable Component   CRU Module  Replace  Upgrade
 DIMMS  Compute Module Y Y
 Disk Drives  Storage Module Y Y
 PCIe cards  I/O Module Y Y
 Chassis  N/A Y N/A

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – System Management

System Management As a critical applications platform offering zero-touch computing (ztC), the ztC Endurance provides the following system management functionality to monitor system health, provide a user interface to access monitoring and configuration functions, enable local and remote monitoring, and automatically manage the process to maintain availability among resources in the system: 

  • Health Monitoring – The management subsystem reads system health inputs from a variety of sources and determines any actions that must be automatically taken to ensure continued system availability. The data sources for the system health monitoring inputs include: 

– BMCs – The management subsystem reads the BMC System Event Logs (SELs) and interfaces with the BMCs to monitor system temperature, voltage and current levels, fan speeds, and other chassis-related parameters. 

– RAS Subsystems – The management subsystem utilizes the Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) features and functionality of the processors, memory, and PCIe subsystems to monitor subsystem health and to receive notification of a wide variety of potential conditions, degradations, and failures. 

  • UI – The management subsystem provides a user interface for system management, configuration, monitoring, and diagnostics. 
  • Local Monitoring – The management subsystem supports local monitoring methods (such as e-mail alerts, SNMP, and REST APIs) used to notify a customer that a system issue has occurred. 
  • Remote Monitoring – The management system supports remote monitoring methods, such as “call home” to Stratus via the Stratus ActiveService Network (ASN).
  • Compute Module Coordination – The management subsystem allows for coordination and communication between the active and standby compute modules. 
  • Compute Failover Determination – The management system evaluates various health-monitoring inputs to determine if and when a compute failover, or Smart Exchange, is required. 
  • Compute Failover Execution – The management subsystem facilitates the compute failover, or Smart Exchange, process to move customer processing from the active compute module to the standby compute module if a failure is detected or if an imminent failure is predicted. 

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – System Management

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – Fault Tolerant Approach

Ensuring Continuous Availability Through a Fault Tolerant Architecture 

To deliver fault tolerance, the ztC Endurance platform utilizes its redundant hardware and intelligent, proactive failover capabilities to automatically take action to avoid a system outage if a hardware failure is identified or if a potential hardware failure is predicted. 

ztC Endurance utilizes an “Identify -> Isolate -> Service” approach to achieving fault tolerance. If an internal component is identified as failed (or likely to fail), that component is automatically removed from operation with no impact to the customer’s compute workload, allowing the customer’s applications to continue to run, and their data to continue to be accessible. Once removed, the failed CRU module can then be replaced via CRU replacement while the server is running without interruption to the customer’s business operations. 

The ztC Endurance system automatically provides this fault-tolerant protection in an application-transparent fashion. The system’s hardware redundancy and fault-tolerant capabilities are abstracted (or hidden behind-the-scenes) from operating system / hypervisor, virtual machine (VM), and application perspective. This provides a single system image to the operating system/hypervisor, VMs, and application, allowing customers to run standard customer operating systems and the standard, off-theshelf customer applications on the ztC Endurance platform without requiring special setup, custom configuration, or code modifications. The customer’s operating system / hypervisor, virtual machines, applications, and data are automatically protected from outages and downtime just by running them on a ztC Endurance system, and no additional work is required. 

The ztC Endurance platform achieves availability via different methods. The compute module applies an active/standby approach to availability. This means that the second, redundant standby compute module waiting to be activated should the system determine a failure of the active compute module is likely. The I/O, storage and power supply modules deliver availability in an active/active mode enabled by fully redundant subsystems. 

Continuous Availability via the Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange (AUL – Smart Exchange)

Stratus’ Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange (AUL – Smart Exchange) automatically manages the process of monitoring and managing the process to maintain availability throughout the ztC Endurance subsystems. This eliminates the need for human intervention to maintain system availability and prevent data loss. Working in concert with the Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) features in the Intel processor architecture and intelligence derived from Stratus’ more than forty years building fault tolerant systems, the Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange monitors system health to predict when a component failure is likely to occur, or to take action to restore system health and prevent a failure. Once this proactive monitoring determines self-healing is unsuccessful and a failure is likely, it begins the process of removing the failed component from operations. AUL-Mart Exchange also manages the process to activate or manage the connection to the remaining redundant subsystem, ensuring system availability and protecting against loss of data.

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – Smart Exchange™

Compute Resources Availability: Stratus Smart Exchange™ Technology 

Stratus’ Smart Exchange technology and Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange are key capabilities that support 99.99999% availability of computing resources in the ztC Endurance platform. The Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange leverages Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) features in the Intel processor architecture to monitor system health and predict when a component failure is likely to occur. Once this proactive monitoring determines a failure is likely, it begins the process of removing the failed component from operations. If a failure occurs in a compute module, Stratus Smart Exchange technology initiates the process to activate the standby compute module and manage the switchover of data from the failed compute node to the now activated standby compute module. 

As Smart Exchange moves operations to the activated standby compute module, it follows a process of iterative updates (to memory on the standby system) to ensure system availability and data integrity during the switchover process. System performance may be downgraded during the time while Smart Exchange automatically updates the healthy module. Computing resources continue to be available during this slowdown – called the brownout period. Once all memory updates are completed, the system is unavailable for a period of approximately 1.2 seconds when the switchover from the failing compute module to the now activated standby compute module is completed. This switchover time is called the blackout period.

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – Storage and I/O Availability

Storage Availability 

The ztC Endurance platform protects against data loss and achieves storage availability by providing full storage redundancy between the corresponding disk drives in the two storage modules. The AUL – Smart Exchange automatically maintains the availability of the storage subsystem; no human intervention is required to maintain storage operations should a drive, storage module, or compute module fail. 

Both the disk drives and storage modules operate in an active / active configuration, with the corresponding disk drives fully mirrored at RAID 1 level. PCIe fabric within the ztC Endurance system is configured such that both storage modules are always connected to the active compute module during normal system operation. If one disk or storage module fails, the remaining mirrored disk or redundant storage module continues to operate. In the event the active compute module fails, the AUL – Smart Exchange connects both storage modules to the newly activated compute module. No data is lost, and the internal storage system maintains continuous availability. 

If a disk or a storage module failed and is replaced, the AUL – Smart Exchange identify the replaced modules/disks and will automatically resync the disks. This will occur automatically, and in the background, allowing the customer’s workloads to continue to operate while the resync is happening.  

I/O Availability 

The ztC Endurance platform achieves continuous I/O availability by providing full I/O redundancy between the corresponding embedded network interfaces and PCIe peripheral devices in the two I/O modules. Both the I/O devices and I/O modules operate in an active / active configuration, meaning both I/O modules and their corresponding embedded networks and devices are connected to the active compute module.

The ztC Endurance system includes two identical, hot-swappable I/O modules that each contain both embedded network interfaces and up to 5 PCIe peripheral devices. To attain full I/O redundancy, each I/O module includes identical embedded network interfaces and are populated with the exact same PCIe peripheral device arrangement in terms of the number of PCIe peripheral devices, type of devices, device-to-slot allocation, etc. The PCIe fabric within the ztC Endurance is configured so that both I/O modules are always connected to the active compute module. Standard network device pairing, or teaming, pairs the corresponding network interfaces and PCIe peripheral devices between the I/O modules to provide the system’s I/O redundancy. The customer’s selected operating system provides management and configuration utilities that allow the customer to create and configure redundant I/O teams during the initial server deployment and to re-configure I/O teaming in the field while the system is in operation.

In the event of the failure of one of the paired devices, or an entire I/O module, the remaining corresponding device, or I/O module continues to operate to provide connectivity to the active compute module. 

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – Power Supply Availability 

Power Supply Availability 

The ztC Endurance has two redundant power supply units (PSU). Each PSU is powerful enough to run the full system (all redundant modules). If one PSU fails, the remining PSU will support the entire ztC Endurance system, enabling it continue to run. A failed PSU can be replaced without interrupting operation of the system.

If a disk or a storage module failed and is replaced, the AUL – Smart Exchange identify the replaced modules/disks and will automatically resync the disks. This will occur automatically, and in the background, allowing the customer’s workloads to continue to operate while the resync is happening.

Stratus ztC Endurance Architecture – Power Supply Availability

How Stratus ztC Endurance Works – Stratus Platforms Engineered for Unmatched Reliability 

1. Fully redundant hardware

Stratus ztC Endurance System Architecture - Hardware

How 

  • Four (4) pairs of redundant customer replaceable unit (CRUs) modules built with industry-standard components – compute, storage, I/O, and power module 
  • Redundant modules leverage multi-path IO for availability 
  • Stratus hardened drivers key for I/O and storage redundancy

Benefit 

  • Compute modules are hot swappable by OT or IT users; does not require specialized tools 
  • Platform predicts a failure and automatically moves workload from active compute module to standby compute module in seconds

2. Hardware-based fault tolerance

Hardware-based fault tolerance

How 

  • PCIe Fabric switch connects “Active” compute module and “Standby” compute module 
  • Moves CPU state, OS, and workload from “Active” compute module to “Standby” compute module before a failure occurs

Benefit 

  • Hardware-based fault tolerance eliminates failover time 
  • No loss of in-flight data or pause in transaction processing 
  • Does not require software modification or failover scripts

3. Stratus Automated Uptime Layer (AUL) with Smart Exchange

Stratus Automated Uptime Layer (AUL) with Smart Exchang

How 

  • Stratus Automated Uptime Layer software with Smart Exchange works across the ztC Endurance system 
  • Manages identification, isolation, and service of errors 
  • Monitors 500 points of platform health and component performance 
  • Initiates Smart Exchange if predicting unrecoverable error in compute module

Benefits 

  • Provides platform self-diagnosis, self-healing, and pro-active health monitoring including alerting 
  • Platform health alerts are sent via the Stratus ActiveService™ Network (ASN) or through standard protocols such as SNMP traps, OPC UA, REST APIs, other

Stratus ztC Endurance models

Stratus ztC Endurance platforms are easy to deploy, easy to manage, and easy to service. We offer three different ztC Endurance models to meet the workload, environment, and budget of today’s application dependent enterprises and edge locations.

Stratus ztC Endurance 3100

Affordable performance for stable, fixed standalone applications in remote offices, branch offices, or shop floor locations

Stratus ztC Endurance 5100

Versatility and flexibility for rapidly growing or evolving applications in regional offices, remote plants, or regional data centers

Stratus ztC Endurance 5100

Stratus ztC Endurance 7100

High performance for high volume data- or transaction-intensive applications in large remote plants or corporate data centers

Stratus ztC Endurance 7100

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ztC Endurance System Specifications 3100 5100 7100
Compute Module
Processor(s) 1 x Intel® Xeon® Silver 4410Y processor 2.0 GHz 2 x Intel® Xeon® Silver 4410Y processor 2.0 GHz 2 x Intel® Xeon® Gold 5418Y processor 2.0 GHz
All Core Turbo Max Frequency Max Turbo Frequency 2.8 GHz
3.9 GHz
2.8 GHz
3.9 GHz
2.8 GHz
3.8 GHz
Intel® Hyper-threaded Cores 12 per processor/ 12 per compute module 12 per processor/ 24 per compute module 24 per processor/ 48 per compute module
Threads 24 per processor/ 24 per compute module 24 per processor/ 48 per compute module 48 per processor/ 96 per compute module
Min/max memory 64 GB / 256 GB DDR5 RDIMMS 128 GB / 512 GB DDR5 RDIMMS 256 GB/ 1024 GB DDR5 RDIMMS
Intel UPI speed 16 GT/s 16 GT/s 16 GT/s
Maximum memory speed 4000 MT/s 4000 MT/s 4400 MT/s
USB Port 2 USB 3.0 (non-redundant) per compute module 2 USB 3.0 (non-redundant) per compute module 2 USB 3.0 (non-redundant) per compute module
I/O Module
Integrated PCIe® adapter slots 5 PCIe 4 x8
per I/O module
5 PCIe 4 x8
per I/O module
5 PCIe 4 x8
per I/O module
10 Gb Ethernet ports 4 / 2 per I/O module 4 / 2 per I/O module 4 / 2 per I/O module
1 Gb Ethernet management ports 2 / 1 per I/O module 2 / 1 per I/O module 2 / 1 per I/O module
10 Gb dual-port Ethernet server
PCIe adapter (fiber & copper)
Up to 5 optional per I/O module1
25 Gb dual-port Ethernet server PCIe adapter (fiber & copper) Up to 5 optional per I/O module1
32 Gb Fibre Channel PCIe adapter Up to 5 optional per I/O module
Storage Module
Internal system drive bays 6 per storage module NVMe PCIe Gen 4
Internal 2.5″ drives
Manageability
Alerts & Notifications SNMP support, email alerts, REST API, and ActiveService Network (ASN) SNMP support, email alerts, REST API, and ActiveService Network (ASN) SNMP support, email alerts, REST API, and ActiveService Network (ASN)
Baseboard management controller Standard Standard Standard

Features of Stratus ztC endurance

Using Stratus ztC Endurance, organizations can rapidly modernize IT infrastructure to maximize reliability, simplify manageability, and increase efficiency with minimal risk. Several key features help make ztC Endurance easy to deploy, easy to manage, and easy to service—at the enterprise data center, operations center, or edge location:

Intelligent, predictive fault tolerance

Stratus ztC Endurance delivers built-in fault tolerance that is transparent to applications without any scripting or modification. Stratus’ Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange™ (AUL – Smart Exchange) software automatically manages system resources to ensure continuous availability while providing a single system image to operating systems, applications, and users. AUL – Smart Exchange monitors nearly 500 alarm points to predict and avoid a potential failure before it occurs, taking action before operations are impacted.

Proactive health monitoring

Stratus ztC Endurance delivers automated self-monitoring, alerting, self-diagnosing, and remediation capabilities. Using the Stratus ActiveService™ Network (ASN) or an organization’s existing monitoring methods, Stratus, partners and/or customers can receive platform health information and alerts. In most cases, the AUL – Smart Exchange identifies and resolves potential issues before they occur while keeping the appropriate teams informed at all times.

Industry standard components

Stratus ztC Endurance is engineered with the highest quality industry-standard components – Intel chipsets, RDIMMs, I/O cards, network cards, and NVMe drives. The platforms run standard shrink-wrapped operating systems and hypervisors, support industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs), and cybersecurity software for ease of management, open interoperability, remote management, and security. Stratus builds on this design with its hardened drivers and built-in fault tolerance.

Workload consolidation

Stratus ztC Endurance offers the flexibility to run critical applications on bare metal – with the choice of industry-standard operating systems from Microsoft or RedHat – or to consolidate workloads with the hypervisor of your choice – whether VMware vSphere or Microsoft Windows Server with Hyper-V. With built-in virtualization, teams can easily consolidate multiple servers and devices onto a single, fault tolerant platform, allowing them to run more applications, improve performance, reduce total IT footprint and costs while ensuring application availability and uptime.

Manageable and serviceable by OT and IT

Status ztC Endurance simplifies manageability with remote monitoring capabilities and management APIs interoperable with standard systems. ztC Endurance is also easily serviceable without specialized IT skills or tools. The platform features four pairs of hot swappable customer replaceable unit (CRU) modules. When a CRU module is replaced, the system automatically returns the module to operation, making ztC Endurance ideal for environments with limited IT resources.

Modular design with redundant CRU modules

Each ztC Endurance platform has four pairs of identical customer replaceable unit modules (CRU modules)—two compute modules, two storage modules, two I/O modules, and two power supply modules. Together with the AUL – Smart Exchange, the redundant pairs of CRU modules act as a single system maintaining 99.99999% availability.

Connectivity to critical infrastructure

Stratus ztC Endurance provides the highest levels of computing reliability, enabling acquisition of critical data and connection to enterprise systems whether in the data center or at the edge. The platform ensures secure and fast access to crucial data in your Storage Area Network (SAN) with reliable Fibre Channel connectivity. ztC Endurance enables single pane of glass visibility of your industrial automation infrastructure with OPC-UA Server, integrating standards-based interoperability and security for connectivity with digitized sensors, industrial equipment, and industrial software applications.

Benefits of Stratus ztC endurance

  • Seven nines availability for critical applications: Built-in computing fault tolerance delivers 99.99999% availability to run critical applications.
  • No loss of data: Redundant computing architecture combined with intelligent automated management prevents in-flight data loss and ensures data integrity.
  • “Zero touch” management and support: Modular design plus pro-active remote health monitoring and self-healing simplifies system management and serviceability for both IT and OT teams.
  • Rapid modernization and workload consolidation: Modernize infrastructure and streamline operations by leveraging virtualization to consolidate multiple software workloads onto a single platform.
  • Multi-layered security: Supports multi-layered defense-in-depth approaches, with focus on both process and product security guidelines to ensure maximum protection.
  • Lower TCO: Reduce IT footprint and purchase fewer software licenses on a highly reliable platform with an expected 7-10 year lifespan, twice that of traditional servers.

Competitive Overview: Stratus ztC Endurance vs. Alternative Solutions

Stratus ztC Endurance vs. Alternative Solutions

Why Stratus

Stratus is the pioneer in fault tolerance. The Company has been around for more than 40 years and made its name providing fault tolerant computing to ensure transaction processing in financial services and telco. Today, that capability is extended to virtually all industries and use cases that require application availability and no downtime or data loss. Three of the four largest U.S. credit card networks, 8/10 of the largest energy companies, and 5/10 of the largest retailers rely on Stratus.

Stratus ztC endurance is built from analyzing more than 100 million hours of computing runtime across 1,000s of customers; we know what causes a compute platform to fail – and how to prevent it before it happens. When you require computing infrastructure to run applications without downtime, you use Stratus.

     Learn more:  Stratus Technologies

Servo Dynamics – Master Distributors of Stratus Technologies in Viet Nam

Master Distributor in Viet Nam

Servo Dynamics Engineering Vietnam, as the Master Distributor of Stratus Technologies, delivers leading fault-tolerant solutions, including the advanced ztC Endurance™ series, to support critical applications in Vietnam. Our partnership empowers businesses to achieve uninterrupted uptime and reliability in industrial and data center environments. With comprehensive support and expertise, Servo Dynamics helps Vietnamese enterprises optimize operations, ensuring seamless, secure, and efficient performance.

     Learn more:  Servo Dynamics – A Master Distributor of Stratus in Viet Nam

Servo Dynamics Services for ztC Endurance

Servo Dynamics provides a range of support and service offerings with a single focus – to enable your long-term continuous system availability and uptime for your critical applications. To ensure peak performance with no system downtime, Servo Dynamics Support Services provide proactive service offerings that meet your specific requirements and ensure the health of your ztC Endurance platform, including its underlying hardware and software components.

Our service options include:

  • Support maximizes platform availability
  • Proactive health monitoring with Stratus ASN or your method of choice
  • Your single source for comprehensive support
  • Root cause analysis prevents problem recurrence
  • Online support tools
  • Total Assurance support
  • Extended Platform support

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FAQs

Stratus ztC Endurance enables intelligent predictive failover, delivering predictable, protected performance through its Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange™ in addition to increased manageability and serviceability via a modular architecture not found in other platforms. This combination of capabilities, coupled with both Stratus and Intel RAS capabilities, embedded hardware and software security, is only available in ztC Endurance.

Stratus ztC Endurance is built on the latest components and leverages the latest technologies. It delivers 40% more performance than ftServer, offers increased modularity for serviceability, and incorporates intelligent, predictive fault tolerance, making it ideal for next-generation, sustainable operations.

Stratus ztC Endurance supports VMware vSphere 8.0 at launch. We are currently planning to release support for Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2H CY2024.

While Stratus ztC Endurance pricing is higher than traditional general-purpose servers that offer fewer than 99% availability, its pricing is less than or in line with other high availability platforms in the marketplace, based on research from industry analysts. Unlike traditional general-purpose servers, high availability clusters, or hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) systems, ztC Endurance features built-in redundancy out-of-the-box that does not require additional scripting or modification to deliver 99.99999% system availability. In contrast, other approaches to fault tolerance require multiple servers, licenses, and networking, which multiplies the cost to an organization, and does not provide the continuous availability, manageability, or serviceability that the ztC Endurance offers. Additionally, Stratus platforms are proven to provide a service life of a minimum 7-10 years, more than twice the lifespan of traditional off-the-shelf servers, significantly reducing TCO for a fault-tolerant computing solution.

While lockstep, i.e., two CPUs running in synchronization, remains an extremely reliable approach to fault tolerance in ftServer, advances in computing and processor performance now enable Stratus to deliver the same or better level of fault tolerance while taking advantage of new performance in Intel chips such as Turbo Mode and AVX instruction sets, which surpass the limitations of lockstep processing.

Currently, 220V is the only option for those systems. This is also consistent with traditional servers in the marketplace with similar processing power. Across the industry, in general, the power requirements for servers continue to increase with the rise in processing power and complexity. We anticipate that 220V will remain the industry requirement in the future.

For ztC Endurance, we have maintained the same power requirements as ftServer while significantly improving processing power, storage capacity, and enabling a single power cord to power the redundant system.

While the 1st generation of ztC Endurance only offers 2.0 GHz gen 4 Xeon chip configurations, the platform is architected to accommodate a broad range of 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable chips. It is important to note that there are a number of considerations that determine overall system performance in addition to CPU clock speed. Typically, higher clock speeds are associated with lower core counts. In general, this is an industry trend, and Intel, in particular, has taken an approach to emphasize the use of accelerators and additional instruction sets rather than clock speed to boost performance.

When looking at alternative server configurations in the marketplace, all face a similar tradeoff between core count and clock speed. Only a handful of configurations in the marketplace utilize server-class chips with higher clock speeds, as they also face the tradeoff between core count and clock speed.

Most importantly, Stratus tests its platforms with its technology partners, such as Rockwell Automation and AVEVA, to provide pre-validated hardware and software architectures that ensure performance and fast implementation.