Business continuity and continuous application availability are among the top requirements for many organizations. Advances in virtualization, storage, and networking have made enhanced business continuity possible. Information technology solutions can now manage both planned and unplanned outages, and provide the flexibility and cost efficiencies that are available from cloud-computing models. This IBM® RedpaperTM publication describes the following products and topics: IBM SpectrumTM Virtualize, which is the software that is at the core of the IBM SAN Volume Controller IBM Spectrum Scale, which was previously known as IBM General Parallel File System (GPFSTM) or IBM Elastic StorageTM IBM Spectrum Virtualize (SAN Volume Controller component) and IBM Spectrum Scale, which are together in an Enhanced Stretched Cluster (ESC) An example implementation Test results Preferred practices when using IBM Spectrum Virtualize and IBM Spectrum Scale together in an Enhanced Stretched Cluster