Omaha, Neb - January 3, 2013
As organizations become increasingly integrated with their trading partners, it is even more critical that electronic documents/files can be exchanged without delays or disruptions. Organizations are therefore looking at how to provide the most consistent access -- or high availability -- for their file transfer environments, usually comprised of one or more SFTP servers, FTP/s servers and HTTP/s servers.
Clustering is a modern approach for providing high availability in applications, and it is now available in the latest release of GoAnywhere Services version 3.1. Clustering spreads out the file transfer workload across multiple GoAnywhere Services systems that communicate with each other through designated channels. If one of the systems were to fail, trading partners are automatically served by the remaining systems in the cluster. This "active-active" failover approach requires no human interaction or third-party tools.
The clustering feature in GoAnywhere Services is supported by all of its server components including its integrated SFTP server, FTP server, FTPS server and HTTPS server. To simplify implementation, all systems in the cluster share the same settings, trading partner accounts and security policies. Remote administration for GoAnywhere Services is provided through an intuitive browser-based interface that also allows access to audit log information for all systems in the cluster.
Another advantage of clustering in GoAnywhere Services is that traffic can be load balanced over multiple systems which is important when servicing a large number of trading partners. All that is required is to install a load balancer like GoAnywhere Gateway in front of the cluster, typically in the DMZ, as the initial point of contact for trading partners.
"Clustering and load balancing is something we've been wanting to add to GoAnywhere Services for a long time," says Bob Luebbe, Linoma Software's [now Fortra] Chief Architect. "Our customers can now provide the best possible up-time for their secure FTP and HTTPS servers, helping them to meet SLAs and compliance requirements."
The release of GoAnywhere Services 3.1 also includes several additional enhancements including better management and archiving of audit logs, improved SSH key management, advancements to ad-hoc secure mail, as well as support for the Oracle database for storing configurations.