Continuent Ships Database Virtualization Solution for PostgreSQL

Continuent Ships Database Virtualization Solution for PostgreSQL

Open Source-Based Solution Provides Enterprises with High Availability for
Mission-Critical Applications

EMERYVILLE, Calif. ­ January 24, 2006 ­ Continuent, Inc., the leading
provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high
availability, today announced the availability of Continuent p/cluster.
Continuent p/cluster provides high availability and scalability services and
delivers the robustness enterprises can rely on to build mission-critical
applications using PostgreSQL.

²Continuent helps companies keep their businesses, and the mission-critical
applications that drive them, up and running continuously. With the
availability of Continuent p/cluster for PostgreSQL, we are extending our
product line to include support for all major open source databases and
providing enterprises with maximum scalability and reliability at a cost
efficient price,² said Eero Teerikorpi, CEO of Continuent. ³The forthcoming
support for the commercial databases will be a natural extension of our
solution portfolio, allowing customers to extend and enhance their existing
investments.²

³In the PostgreSQL community, there¹s a burgeoning demand to push both
performance and reliability to higher and higher levels, using commodity
hardware and reasonably priced and/or open source software tools,² said Josh
Berkus, a member of PostgreSQL¹s Core Team. ³Clustering tools like
Continuent p/cluster and Sequoia help raise the high availability
expectations of PostgreSQL users.²

Joshua O'Brien, database administrator at ZedX, Inc., a Continuent customer,
said, ³As an information technology company that specializes in the
development of weather-dependent, decision-support products for specific
industries such as agriculture and energy, data availability is
business-critical for us. Continuent p/cluster provides the availability,
scalability and fail-over protection that we require.²

Features and benefits of Continuent p/cluster include:

· High availability and instantaneous failover: Continuent p/cluster
provides high availability by ensuring any number of PostgreSQL database
servers are fully synchronized at all times. It provides transparent
failover and disaster recovering services for all transactions, and
automatic continuity at the transaction level with no lost transactions.
Business continuity is assured through online maintenance, with no downtime,
service interruptions or database outages.

· Scalability and dynamic load balancing: A number of configurations
can be installed that provide the best practices to achieve the desired
application performance. This includes vertical scale-out ­ adding low cost
commodity hardware while maintaining the image of a single large database to
the application tiers. Data partitioning is also supported for additional
scalability. Flexible load balancing capabilities insure the effective use
of hardware investments. A number of load balancing configurations are
possible, ensuring the optimal one to make the most of computer resources.

· Heterogeneous database support: Some applications may involve more
than one brand of database, involve a migration from one database brand to
another or simply involve upgrading to a new release of the same database.
Continuent p/cluster supports it all transparently and seamlessly.

· Manageability: A single graphical management console provides a
global view of the virtual databases and the database cluster. Alerts and
administrative tools are generated to notify users of system status.

· Low TCO, high ROI: Installing p/cluster is simple, fast and cost
effective. The architecture is designed to use commodity hardware and does
not require any special hardware devices like storage area networks or load
balancers, driving costs down.

· Support of PostgreSQL¹s native SQL: Continuent p/cluster supports
PostgreSQL¹s native SQL and is integrated with native database functions for
seamless integration and easy management. The product creates a single
virtual database view of multiple PostgreSQL databases and is designed to
integrate seamlessly with PostgreSQL-based applications.

Continuent p/cluster is part of Continuent¹s open source-based product line
that works with all major databases and delivers high availability in any
database environment, including those that are heterogeneous. Continuent
ensures availability through its database virtualization technology that
creates a single view of multiple databases, whether commercial or open
source, so that fail-over and load balancing capabilities are completely
transparent to the application layer.

Continuent p/cluster is based on Sequoia technology, one of four projects
hosted by Continuent.org, an open source community portal sponsored by
Continuent, Inc. and dedicated to database high availability, scalability
services and related technologies. More information about Sequoia and the
other Continuent.org projects can be found at
http://www.continuent.org/Projects.

Availability and pricing:

Continuent p/cluster is available today with pricing starting at $4,995 per
database CPU.

About Continuent

Continuent ensures business continuity for the enterprise. With flexible
solutions that deliver data availability and scalability, Continuent
guarantees customers¹ peace of mind and lets them focus on running a
successful business. Continuent¹s industry breakthrough middleware works
with all major databases, including MySQL®, PostgreSQL, Sybase®, Microsoft®
SQL Server, Oracle® and IBM® DB2®. Through the use of database
virtualization technology, Continuent solutions even support heterogeneous
database environments. Continuent products are compatible with a wide
variety of hardware, operating system and application environments.
Continuent is headquartered in Emeryville, CA, with research labs in France
and Finland. For more information, please visit www.continuent.com.

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Press Contacts

Donna Murno
Racepoint Group
(781) 487-4612
dmurno(at)racepointgroup(dot)com


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registered trademark of Sybase, Inc. Oracle is a registered trademark of
Oracle. IBM and DB2 are registered trademarks of IBM in the United States.
Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective corporations