Stories by Tom Henderson and Laszlo Szenes

Backup app supports several devices, OSes

Of the products we've tested, Arkeia Network Backup had the longest lists of supported operating-system clients and storage devices and methods, a testament to Arkeia's background as an early open source backup application, based on Linux.

Backup app eases file restoration

True Image Enterprise Server (we tested Version 9.1) is a data center-focused client/server application that supports a wide variety of Windows and Linux operating systems and CPUs as clients or servers.

Multicore technology works for IBM server

Multicore technology pays off for IBM with its 326m server. Cramming as many dual-core Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processors into the smallest space possible, the eServer 326m provides enormous amounts of CPU muscle.

Server can take a licking

It's hard to kill Stratus Technologies' ftServer 5700. We tried. We tested the highly fault-tolerant system in a number of very hostile ways, and at worst it took about 6 minutes to recover to full synchronization -- while continuing to run. The lock-step synchronization of what amounts to two servers in a 4U frame wasn't terribly difficult to manage. We found the software to be potentially dangerous, however, because of the Spartan instrumentation that Stratus uses.