Stratus Technologies, Inc.

111 Powdermill Road

Maynard, MA 01754-3409
U. S. A.

N E W S  N E W S  N E W S  N E W S  N E W S

Contacts:

Ed Marshall Ken Donoghue

Beaupre & Co. Public Relations Stratus Technologies
603-559-5816 978-461-7269
emarshall@beaupre.com ken.donoghue@stratus.com
www.beaupre.com www.stratus.com

Stratus continuously available ftServer line

provides fault-tolerance for SQL Server 2008

Security, scalability and reliability at its best

MAYNARD, Mass., Nov. 3, 2009 – In cooperation with Microsoft Corp., Stratus Technologies
announced today that its newest ftServer® fault-tolerant platform supports Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
This software/server combination delivers a robust, continuously available infrastructure that scales with
customers’ business requirements and delivers predictable performance to users accessing critical
business applications. Stratus delivers level-one support to customers who purchase the database
software, with escalation as needed to Microsoft; Stratus also services the server and OS, representing a
single point of customer contact for rapid issue resolution.

Running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Editions, Stratus ftServer platform reliability
surpasses comparable competitive database implementations using standard x86 servers at a fraction of
the cost. Compared to alternative hardware failover configurations, the ftServer system is completely self-
contained and ready to work out of the box with no software modifications and scripting required. By
improving the simplicity of operation and removing the need to cluster for node availability, the user is
freed up to take greater advantage of the flexibility and enterprise features of SQL Server.

The entire ftServer family provides field-proven uptime of nearly 99.9999 percent, the industry’s most
reliable Intel processor-based platform for Windows-based applications. By also using Stratus’ Active
Upgrade™ software with ftServer systems, customers can reduce both planned and unplanned downtime
for online software upgrades and critical operating system hot fixes without having to take the server or
application offline for extended periods.
“Among the wide range of availability requirements our family of Xeon 5500 processor-powered ftServer
systems can satisfy, this new server family is an ideal database engine, benefitting from increased power
and performance, together with the Intel QPI architecture and plug-and-play operational simplicity,” said
Denny Lane, Stratus director of product management. “Having delivered affordable mainframe-class
availability for critical OLTP applications since 1982, Stratus’ hardware/software combination lets
customers deal with a single vendor to purchase, install and support a fully integrated database solution.”

Superior database availability, half the cost

Using Oracle RAC with industry-standard servers to achieve high-availability for the Oracle 11g
Enterprise Edition will cost approximately 125 percent more than deploying Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Enterprise Edition on a similarly configured Stratus ftServer 6300 system(1). Using Standard Editions of
both database products, an ftServer 4500 system with SQL Server 2008 costs approximately 40 percent
less than Oracle 11g with RAC on a similarly configured server cluster(2). The fault-tolerant architecture
of Stratus servers eliminates unplanned downtime, data loss, restarts and the need to provision additional
server capacity to accommodate failover.

“Microsoft SQL Server users who need the highest degree of hardware availability for mid-scale
databases will find the new ftServer family offers true fault tolerance in a price/performance package
competitive with other solutions in the market,” said Claude Lorenson, director of SQL Server marketing
at Microsoft Corp. “Customers can have confidence in SQL Server on ftServer for local provisioning of
database servers with exceptional uptime, rapid asynchronous data mirroring for disaster recovery, rolling
upgrade-style patch management with minimal operational impact, and for any database application
where underlying hardware with near-six nines availability is the preferred choice.”

About Stratus Technologies

Stratus Technologies focuses exclusively on helping its customers keep critical business operations online
without interruption. For more information, visit www.stratus.com.

(1) Servers configured with two quad-core 2.93GHz processors, 64GB memory, two 73GB disks, two FC
HBAs
(2) Servers configured with two quad-core 2.00GHz processors, 32GB memory, two 73GB disks, two FC
HBAs

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© 2009 Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. All rights reserved.

Stratus is a registered trademark of Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. The Stratus Technologies logo is a
trademark of Stratus Technologies Bermuda Ltd. All other marks are the property of their respective
owners.