As UNIX servers become larger and more robust, they support more and more business-critical applications within a business establishment. When competition in today's business environment means keeping business-critical UNIX applications available to customers and employees twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year ... downtime is not an option. Every second counts ... a system failure, no matter how small, can interrupt transactions and halt workflow. Your business suffers, your customers suffer, and your employees suffer.

High-availability describes a number of techniques which can be used to reduce downtime and keep systems running, and IBM has been a leader in this area for years. At the UUASC May meeting, member Pokil Wong, an IBM system architect, will describe the history of UNIX high availability, some end-to-end high availability considerations, and current UNIX high availability products.

Pokil has an educational background in pharmaceutical chemistry and has been with IBM for 15 years. His product background within IBM includes data acquisition interfaces, mainframes running VM, and IBM UNIX on S/370, PS/2, RT, and RS/6000. Industry background includes healthcare, publishing, and local government.