Red Hat has launched a version of the Linux operating system for use in clustered server environments.

Red Hat High Availability Server 1.0 lets users cluster individual servers so that if one server fails, another will automatically take over its workload. This provides a high availability server environment, suitable for web servers, ftp servers, mail gateways, firewalls and VPN gateways.

The product also supports heterogeneous network environments allowing each node within the cluster to run Red Hat Linux or third-party operating systems including Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows NT. It is available online and from resellers priced at $1995.

Paul McNamara, vice president of products and platforms at Red Hat, said the product is an extension of technology already available in Red Hat Linux 6.2.

"Clustering is a maturing of the technology. We had the technology before in Red Hat Linux 6.2 but it was intended for early adopters. We've now unbundled the clustering aspect and added easy installation and more security to make it a commercial product," said McNamara.

As part of the security features, users can set up so-called sand traps that redirect IP traffic from potential attackers to a secure address. Multiple traffic routing and scheduling techniques, along with virtual IP addresses, help to create a security barrier, according to the company.

Red Hat said the Server could be configured in two ways: as a two node cold failover cluster ideally suited for applications where simple, affordable redundancy is needed such as firewalls, static web servers, DNS and mail servers, or as Linux Virtual Server mode, where a two node load balancer accepts requests and directs those requests to one of any number of IP-based servers using a configurable traffic management algorithm.