06/18/2008

PostPath, creator of the only email and collaboration server that is a drop-in alternative to Microsoft Exchange, today announced availability of the PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2.

ebizQ received the following:

The PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 is a standards-based, open-systems solution for ensuring real-time business continuity and uninterrupted uptime for a company's critical email and collaboration applications at a fraction of the cost and complexity of Microsoft Exchange.

Implementing high availability with Exchange is so complex and expensive that many businesses have chosen to live without it, which in the event of a failure can cause significant data loss and extend outages while servers are reconstructed and lost data restored, a process that can take 24 hours or even several days. PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 offers redundancy and high availability that is simple to implement and available at a fraction of the cost of any Exchange-based approach. For the first time, small and medium-sized businesses with limited budgets and resources can implement full server redundancy with manual or automatic failover capability without sacrificing native interoperability with Outlook, Blackberry and the full Exchange ecosystem.

PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 is a complete email and collaboration server that is a drop-in alternative to Microsoft Exchange and incorporates multiple measures to ensure ongoing service in the event of a failure in the underlying hardware or network systems. It consists of a multi-server bundle with one or more instances of the primary PostPath Server that acts as the mailbox email server(s) during normal operation, plus a redundant server to take over in case of primary server failure.

Rather than the closed and proprietary JET database seen in Microsoft Exchange, the PostPath Server uses a "continually consistent" file-based data store. By exploiting the performance and capabilities of native server file systems in this way, the PostPath Server enables the use of the open and standards-based high-availability tools leveraged in PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 including RedHat Cluster Server, DRBD and Linux-HA– dramatically simplifying the implementation and management of high availability email services.

Newly added features to v2 of the PostPath Server High Availability Edition greatly expand the number and types of high availability configurations supported. These include the choice of shared or replicated storage configurations, on or offsite redundancy configurations, synchronous or asynchronous replication configurations (performance enhancer for offsite / high-latency implementations), RedHat cluster support ("N+1" configurations with "N" active primary servers any one of which could failover to the 1 backup server in the event of a primary server failure), virtual (VMware) HA support, simplified configuration, improved manageability, the ability to configure either hot or cold failover, and high-availability support for webmail and for mobile devices including BlackBerry and ActiveSync.

This expanded range of features provides greater choice for businesses looking to implement high availability in their email server, enabling simplified deployment well matched to individual customer needs. PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 also supports high availability in a VMware virtualized environment, with support of features such as VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion to enable hot migration of running virtual machines from one physical machine to another with zero down time and virtual machine files to be moved from one server to another without interruption. With this broad range of options, the new PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 offers an even greater range of high availability configurations for businesses to span a broad range of needs and budget levels.

PostPath has long supported customers' high availability environments, and the features included in the PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 is a direct response to customers’ increasingly varied HA needs. "Since email is so mission critical for us and we can’t afford to have it go down, having a High Availability solution for our email server is very important," said Wade Grimes, IT operations manager at the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System. "The new PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 provides even more options to support high availability for a hospital like ours, and we are currently working to implement PostPath in our VMware high availability environment as we move forward with our implementation."

PostPath Server High Availability Edition v2 is the latest addition to the PostPath Server family, a line of email servers that are network-protocol interoperable with the Exchange ecosystem including Outlook, BlackBerry, Active Directory and ActiveSync, without requiring cumbersome plug-ins or proprietary middleware. PostPath Server offers superior performance at a fraction of the cost of alternative solutions.

"As the email user base grows within an organization, a high availability email server solution moves from a 'nice to have' into an absolute imperative. The expense of email downtime is extraordinary and can immediately impact a company's bottom-line," said Duncan Greatwood, CEO of PostPath. "The new offering provides a simple, compelling and cost-efficient reason for SMB’s in particular to implement high availability while avoiding the risks, costs and uncertainty associated with attempts to implement HA using Microsoft Exchange."