Tzolkin Corporation's AutoFailover service promises to monitor internet servers, balance load among multiple servers, and automatically route to alternate servers when the primary server fails.

by Wayne Kawamoto [September 28, 2001]

Tzolkin Corporation, a provider of utlities and online information, announced the release its AutoFailover service. AutoFailover is the company's server monitoring, load balancing, and automatic failover service that is designed to ensure the high-availability of Internet e-business servers and data.

Tzolkin says that by using AutoFailover, a Tzolkin customer may be able to maintain an on-line presence even when an Internet server fails or loses its Internet connection.

According to Tzolkin, AutoFailover is based on Tzolkin's TZO Dynamic DNS service, a service whose reliability has been tested and proven in almost five years of commercial use. Because its foundation is the TZO Dynamic DNS service, AutoFailover should support servers having either a static or dynamic IP address.

There are two versions of AutoFailover, the Enterprise and the SOHO version, each addressing a different market.

AutoFailover Enterprise is designed for small to medium businesses that have a back-up server for each of their Internet servers. Commonly, they install the back-up servers at a different location and connect each to the Internet through a different service provider. AutoFailover monitors the availability of both of the customer's servers and if the primary server becomes unavailable AutoFailover notifies the customer and automatically changes the DNS record so that the customer's domain name is resolved to the IP address of the customer's alternate server. In addition, AutoFailover Enterprise can also perform "round robin" load balancing. The customer can choose one of five protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, FTP, or POP3) for AutoFailover to monitor.

AutoFailover SOHO is designed for small businesses, associations, and individuals running their own Internet servers. The customer can back-up the contents of the web server on the free web space offered by most ISP's and can back up their mail server with a free commercial mail box. AutoFailover SOHO monitors the customer's server and should the server fail, AutoFailover SOHO automatically routes client requests to the back-up web server or back-up mailbox.

"Tzolkin has a program designed specifically so that ISPs can offer AutoFailover to their customers," says Ken Perrin, VP Sales and Marketing. "Offering AutoFailover allows an ISP to create additional value and earn some additional profit as well. ISPs, and any company that sells services, knows that it's crucial to differentiate their services from their competitor's services. Offering AutoFailover can create that differentiation."

"Tzolkin's AutoFailover service is a perfect complement to the replication capability of Lotus Domino," says John Walsh, Director of Hosting at Internoded Inc. "We love this service not only because it's a reliable site monitoring service but also because it automatically switches traffic over to a mirrored site if a site ever goes down. This is an evolutionary service that is helping us keep up with the increasing demands of Internet businesses."

"Companies involved in e-commerce and e-business, know that it's crucial for them to have an un-interrupted online presence," said Gary Cook CEO of Tzolkin Corporation. "AutoFailover provides a fault-resistant environment in which customers can run their Internet servers. We've built on the proven reliability of the TZO dynamic DNS service to help our customers keep their critical on-line applications on-line. Because AutoFailover is platform independent and because we have the two different versions, we expect AutoFailover to appeal to a broad range of companies."

Availability and pricing
AutoFailover Enterprise and AutoFailover SOHO are immediately available and come in two different versions with a free ten-day trial.

The Enterprise edition is priced at $99.95 per month or $995.00 per year.

The SOHO version is available for $29.95 or $299.95 per year.

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