Providing Open Architecture High Availability Solutions

4.1 Application Areas

While the primary application area for an open HA framework is broadly aimed at the systems that

provide telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, many other application areas share similar

types of architectures and requirements, and will also benefit from an open HA framework. Some

examples of telecommunications and Internet infrastructure applications include:

• SoftSwitches and VoIP gateways

• Telecom network service control points (SCP)

• Telecom network switch transfer Points (STP)

• Wireless base station controller (BSC), radio network controllers (RNC)

• Remote access controllers

• Web hosting, caching, and email servers

• Broadband distribution nodes

• Voice portals and unified messaging systems

These systems are components in the larger network infrastructure and provide critical services in

the data path, control nodes, network management elements, as well as the billing and the

application services areas. There is growing reliance on this infrastructure with the consequent

expectation of its continuous availability. The availability expectation also assumes that the desired

levels of data integrity, performance, Quality of Service (QoS), and security are acceptably

maintained.

4.2 Open HA Framework Outline

The primary goal of the HA Forum is to describe an Open HA Framework. Since the idea of an

open HA framework is that systems can be built of compatible modular components - the

Framework must describe and bound these components, and define the standard interfaces between

them. It must not only describe the modules and interfaces within an individual system, but also the

interfaces between the systems.

The framework must be able to be implemented in a heterogeneous hardware and software

environment and be compatible with the features and capabilities of existing open hardware and

software standards. It must also consider the design methodologies used in existing HA

applications to ease the migration and porting effort of such applications to the open systems HA

approach.