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Blog

Thomas Goebels recently joined Marathon as sales manager for the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region. Thomas will be responsible for growing Marathon’s business across the region with a particular focus on the channel and end users. Thomas brings impressive sales experience and a remarkable track record to his new role, having previously held positions with NetScout Systems, PC-WARE Information Technologies AG, Bechtle and Novell. Thomas will be working closely with Marathon’s distributor in Germany, ADN. ADN has been Marathon’s key distributor for the DACH region since 2007.

“The need for data and application availability has never been greater as companies of all sizes now have to operate on a 24x7 global basis. Marathon is uniquely qualified to provide solutions to meet the customer pain points associated with this,” said Thomas. “I am eager to build on Marathon’s vision of providing automated high availability and disaster recovery solutions for businesses of all sizes.”

Thomas can be reached at tgoebels (at) marathontechnologies.com
 

It’s always interesting at this time of year to take a look back at what was top of mind for our newsletter readers. It’s also a great opportunity for you to discover a key topic that you might have missed the first time around. Here are our top 5 most downloaded articles and white papers of 2009:

1. Configuring High Availability for Windows Server 2008 Environments
2. Optimizing Exchange High Availability - A New Approach
3. Increasing Reliability and Availability in a Virtualized SQL Server Environment
4. Reduce Downtime by 70% - Without Spending a Dime
5. iX Magazine product review: vSphere 4 FT vs. Citrix XenServer with everRun VM
 

If you would like to stay current with latest trends, developments and tools in the world of high availability and disaster reocvery, be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter by sending an email to mstec@marathontechnologies.com or click on the Resource Center and look for the sign-up box in the right column.

The 2010 Winter Olympics may still be a few months away, but everRun has recently added a couple of medals to the trophy case, including the 2009 Windows IT Pro Magazine Editors Gold Award in the “Best High Availability/Disaster Recovery Product” category, and the Bronze award in the "Best Mid-range Software" category from TechAwards Circle.

Marathon has received 16 industry awards in the last two years. Congratulations to the everRun team for producing such an outstanding product worthy of industry recognition 16 times over!

We had some great questions during last week's webinar High Availability Doesn't Have to be Expensive. A recap of the Q&A is below, including the questions that we weren't able to get to because of time constraints. Be sure to check out our library of on-demand webinars, for this webinar, as well as other topics including SQL availability, Windows Server availability, everRun product demos and more.

Q: How is everRun different from replication solutions?
To understand how everRun is different from replication solutions, you need to take a look at the key differences between disaster recovery and high availability. Availability is about preventing outages instead of just recovering from them; about maintaining the user state with minimal interruptions. With disaster recovery (DR) and replication methods, if there is a failure, you lose connectivity for a period of time and then you have to recover your data and system state. Conversely, availability is about reducing and preventing downtime and keeping users online, even through a failure.

everRun is used for availability, both locally and for short-distance geographic separation as well. We have a replication and recovery solution as well that can be used for disaster recovery for long distances. You should determine what your objectives are: do I have to keep my applications up and running or do I just need to recover it if something fails? What’s the recovery time objective for each application? It’s up to your individual applications and what level of protection you need for each. Oftentimes, availability is a priority as downtime is not desirable, with DR also a requirement on top of that to ensure recovery in the event of a major outage.

Q: What kind of bandwidth requirement is needed for a two-site solution?
As a general rule of thumb, an OC3 connection is required per application workload being protected. Latency is really more critical than bandwidth and this will vary based on the applications and environment.

Q: How does everRun software compare with EMC’s RepliStor and AutoStart applications?
everRun is different from these products because it provides high availability in an automated way with fault tolerant capabilities to prevent user interruptions when hardware fails. This goes back to prevention rather than recovery.

RepliStor is a DR/replication product. While it does provide a failover/restart capability, as do most DR solutions, it is really best used for failover in the event of a major disaster. There’s usually a substantial amount of downtime and a manual failover process to get the systems back online at the secondary site and to failback once the primary site is back online. For DR, you probably want to be able to specify when your systems fail over. But, you will lose some data because this is an asynchronous solution. For minor outages, you really don’t want this. For example, let’s say the power goes out in your primary location for an hour. It can take even longer than that with DR systems to failover to the secondary DR site. You would have been better off just waiting an hour for the power to come back on and restarting the primary systems. RepliStor is more suited for major disaster scenarios, rather than just minor local or regional failures.

Auto-Start is more of a clustering type of product designed for availability and application restarts. It’s not designed to prevent downtime due to failures, but rather to recover from them.

Q: Can everRun be used for planned downtime?
Planned downtime for patches, upgrades, etc. can sometimes cost as much or more to your company as unplanned downtime. The answer to this question will depend on the type of updates. Some OS upgrades do require that there be a restart for the changes to take effect. For some types of planned maintenance, everRun can eliminate the need for downtime. For the others, one of the main things everRun can do is to reduce the risk of updating a system and not having it come back online. For example, you’ve just overwritten your production system and it worked in a test environment, but now it won’t come up in production. We can reduce that risk greatly, by getting it back online quickly without the need to rebuild the server.

Q: What is the difference between everRun and vMotion and VMware HA?
These are two different products, so we'll start with VMware HA. The HA product is a failover/restart capability. If you lose a host, the system will try to restart the virtual machines on another host on the pool. There’s no real guarantee here though. It’s going to try to find resources when a failure happens, but they might not be there. There are some checks in place to warn when over using resources will impact the recovery plan but there is nothing to prevent this. When there’s a critical RTO though, it’s better to have something that is more assured like what everRun provides. everRun uses mirrored systems, so you always know that you have resources available in the event of a failure. everRun also protects the data – we don’t require a SAN. everRun can mirror data between to two systems or two buildings and it doesn’t have to be the same type of storage on both sides. It can be SAN on one side and NAS on the other. everRun can move the data between locations and keep it tied to the applications to keep your business running, even when there is a failure.

As far as vMotion, that is primarily used for planned downtime. Motion capabilities in general allow virtual machines to be moved or “motioned” while they are running from one host to another host. everRun can provide that capability as well. We call it online migration. If you want to take host offline for planned downtime for upgrades for example, we can do that. Motioning is really for planned downtime. If something fails unexpectedly, vMotion can’t help you there. everRun provides capabilities for both planned and unplanned downtime.

Q: What versions of Windows does everRun support?
everRun supports Windows Server 2003 SP2 Standard and Enterprise Editions, 32-bit and 64-bit, as well as Windows Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise Editions, 64-bit.

Q: In considering using everRun across two sites, is everRun doing real-time synchronization between the sites?
Yes it is. It’s writing the data on both systems in a synchronous manner, so that data is always complete—system data and applications are secure and exactly mirrored on the secondary server. It protects the entire environment—the operating system, registry, every setting, etc. is completely cloned. You can turn on that system on the other site and not have to rebuild the server. We maintain exact mirror copies of both servers. That goes back to our message about prevention and computing through failures, rather than downtime and recovery.

Q: Does everRun work with SQL 2008 and SharePoint 2010?
everRun sits below Windows. It’s not in the operating environment. We protect the entire environment, so anything in that environment is automatically protected, whether it’s SQL or Exchange or anything else, even custom applications. There is no customization needed for everRun to protect any Windows applications.

Q: What are the storage requirements for everRun?
everRun offers two storage configuration options: mirrored storage and a shared storage model. When using mirrored storage, everRun will synchronously mirror all storage between paired hosts; this includes the OS, the application, data, etc. This does not require similar storage vendors or types. One host can have SAN-attached storage while the other has local SCSI storage.

In a shared-storage configuration, the everRun paired hosts must be connected to the same storage device with access to the shared LUN’s. In this configuration, everRun does not mirror the data or protect against failures within the storage subsystem. Because of this, it is critical that you ensure proper configuration of the storage devices to protect against failures.

Q: Should everRun be set up on a seperate server?
everRun is typically deployed on two new servers, however an existing server can be utilized, requiring only one additional server.

Q: How is everRun different from the NeverFail product?
Neverfail is an asynchronous DR solution with failover/restart capabilities.
 

Jim Welch, Marathon's President and CEO is featured in this week's Worcester Business Journal in the "Shop Talk" column. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

WBJ: How has this crazy economy impacted Marathon Technologies?

Jim Welch: I think, prior to me joining {Marathon}, sales cycles were getting longer and people were being more careful about what they were buying. However, the nice part of our core business is, if you need it, you need it. If you’re putting in an application that has to run and be reliable, you don’t have a choice. It’s part of the infrastructure that keeps your business running. So, from that perspective, we’ve weathered the storm fairly well and I think as you look forward, now that that general IT spending is starting to ease up a little bit, we’re going to see a lift.

WBJ: Who are your customers?

Jim Welch: Typically, our best customers are ones that need their systems to never go down. But if you look at how things are changing over the last couple of years, we see a drive by IT shops to reduce costs by consolidating infrastructure. The way they consolidate is by putting more applications on fewer servers which stacks up their application risk, if you will, so if that one physical hardware fails, not one application fails but now three, five or eight could fail. So, in those environments we’re becoming more important as part of that infrastructure so they can rely on fewer servers.

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview, including the WBJ's interesting photo style on the Worcester Business Journal website.

Thanks again to those who joined us for the everRun 2G live demo. An on-demand recording is now available to watch at your convenience.

We had quite a few questions and couldn’t get to all of them during the webinar, so we’ve put together a recap of all of the questions and answers below, including the ones we weren’t able to get to during the live event.

Q: You said that everRun supports any Windows application. Does that include Oracle DB too?
Yes. Any application that runs on Windows is supported by everRun. Custom applications that run in Windows are supported as well.

Q: Does workload mean a virtual machine that is running inside of everRun 2G?
Yes, that’s correct. A workload is a virtual machine that has its own Windows environment, its own application environment, and its own identity.

Q: Can you upgrade to everRun 2G from 7.1 or is it a new installation?
everRun 7.1 is the previous version of our product, and sits on a Windows base. everRun 2G is based on XenServer. As such it requires a new installation. We have a process to help you migrate your virtual machine from everRun HA or FT to everRun 2G. We also offer services to perform this migration.

Q: In everRun FT we need 3 windows licenses, 2 for co-servers and 1 for FT... how many Windows licenses do we need for 2G?
We always recommend that your check with your software vendors and license agreements on this question. For Windows, you do need a valid licensed copy of Windows on both hosts. If you have the Enterprise version of Windows, you can have multiple workloads there using the same enterprise license. Be sure to check with your Microsoft representative or other vendors for specific licensing questions.

Q: What is the base operating system running on Xen Hosts?
XenServer is the base operating system. everRun runs on top of XenServer.

Q: In an environment such as the one shown on your slide, would you be paying for two licenses of MS Exchange?
You should always check with your vendor and/or license agreement to ensure you have your applications licensed correctly.

Q: Can everRun be deployed on an existing server without a rebuild of the OS or server?
It can be if the existing server is running Citrix XenServer. In this case you would simply layer on everRun. If you have a Windows server with Windows on the bare metal, you would have to reconstruct that environment.

Q: What are the benefits of moving to everRun 2G for customers who are currently running everRun HA or FT?
everRun 2G is the next generation of everRun HA and FT, enabling multiple levels of protection within a single solution. While there are a number of new capabilities within everRun 2G, one of the most significant enhancements is the ability to protect multiple Windows workloads on a single pair of servers. With everRun HA and FT, only a single Windows workload can be protected on a pair of servers. everRun 2G allows multiple workloads to be protected on the same pair of servers to help reduce hardware costs and take advantage of more powerful servers. From a supported platform standpoint, everRun HA and FT support Windows Server 2003 32-bit Standard and Enterprise. everRun 2G supports Windows Server 2003 32- bit and 64-bit Standard and Enterprise as well as Windows Server 2008 64-bit Standard and Enterprise.

Q: How would you plug the NICs from each server to your network so that a faulty switch would not mess up the redundancy?
As a best practice to remove any single point of failure, redundant switches would be deployed.

Q: What is the maximum distance/geographic location for two physical servers to work using everRun?
The answer to this question is based on latency and bandwidth. It depends on the network connection. We have a latency requirement of 5ms roundtrip between the two servers to maintain the synchronous state that we provide. We have customers that separate servers campus-wide, and customers that run up to 50-100 miles with a dedicated fiber connection between the two servers. It depends on what your needs and requirements are and the network that runs between the two locations.

Q: At what intervals does everRun monitor the standby server?
It checks constantly. One of the things everRun does that is unique is active validation. We are constantly utilizing and validating the secondary server and all its devices. We’re doing disk I/O, we’re doing network reads, taking packets in from the network so that we know the network is good and the CPU is good. We’re actively validating all of the components. With a back-up site, it could be weeks or months since anything has run on the secondary server. So if there’s a failure that goes unnoticed on the backup server, and then there’s a failure on the primary, it has nowhere to go. With everRun, the secondary system is being actively validated at all times so that you know it will work in the event of a failure.

Q: Does Level 3 protection require shared storage?
It does not. everRun offers two storage configuration options; mirrored storage and a shared storage model. When using mirrored storage, everRun will synchronously mirror all data between paired hosts; this includes the OS, the application, data, etc. This does not require similar storage vendors or types. One host can have SAN-attached storage while the other has local SCSI storage. In a shared-storage configuration, the everRun paired hosts must be connected to the same storage device with access to the shared LUN’s. In this configuration, everRun does not mirror the data or protect against failures within the storage subsystem. Because of this, it is critical that you ensure proper configuration of the storage devices to protect against failures.

Q: How much hardware similarity do you need between the hosts in a pool?
It’s really tied to similarities in processors, not servers or disks. For a complete list of hardware that is supported, view our Supported Processor List.

Q: Does everRun having rolling upgrade support?
There are capabilities to assist with applying updates and performing maintenance. To be clear, everRun does not allow applying a service pack without having to reboot the server, if the service pack requires it. Contact Marathon for more information on this capability.

Q: Do you have plans to support Hyper-V?
We plan to support Hyper-V in a future release.

 Q: Do you have some experience about Oracle Applications in that (virtual) environment - are there any references?
We do have customers running Oracle. Please contact our sales department for references.

Q: Is the Xen server running over Windows, Linux, Unix?
XenServer runs on the bare metal. It does not run ‘over’ any other OS.

Q: If you have an Exchange server that is separated by a WAN, how does the client connect to the 2nd server when we lose network connection on primary?
Each of the everRun-protected hosts must be in a common subnet or vLAN.

Q: Will the system still run in this scenario: disk is not working / has fault on host 1 while host 2 has a problem on the NIC both at the same time?
Absolutely. everRun will handle each of these failures simultaneously without any disruption or interruption to the application.

Q: Can a workload be running on Linux?
Linux workloads are not currently supported for protection by everRun. Unprotected Linux workloads can be created, however.

Q: How do you remotely monitor the system and get automatic notification of hardware failures – e.g. SNMP?
SNMP will be available in the near future.

Q: Will everRun work over WAN and if so what is required?
5ms latency and 155Mb bandwidth per protected workload.
 

iX Magazin, a leading IT publication based in Germany, recently published an in-depth product comparison review of VMware’s vSphere 4 FT vs. Citrix XenServer with everRun VM in their September 2009 issue. In his article, “Fehlertolerante Systeme” or fault tolerant systems, reviewer Jörg Riether noted everRun’s ease of installation and intuitive setup process. Here’s a couple of additional highlights from the review:

“everRun has a very transparent way of handling the sudden total failure of a node without noticeable interruptions – this is true from the perspective of the administrator and from the viewpoint of the user working on the protected server. The Level 3 protected VM goes on running through each active application without any loss of performance. If the server is switched on again after being disconnected from the mains, everRun re-integrates it immediately and starts synchronization.

One of the fundamental advantages of everRun is demonstrated here: it doesn't require a data memory shared by both hosts. Marathon is able to replicate any virtual hard disks from one Xen host on the other and keep them synchronized. This eliminates the effort required for a SAN with synchronous mirroring and redundant paths as everRun itself includes the technology.”

To read the entire product review article (in English!), you can download the PDF here.

Thanks again to those who joined us for last week’s webinar, "Windows Server 2008 High Availability: Technology Comparison." The on-demand recording of last week's webinar is now available to watch at your convenience (here).

We had a lot of good questions from our attendees during the Q&A portion of the webinar, which are summarized below.

Q: How do you determine when to use an HA solution vs. a DR solution?
When it comes to availability vs. recovery, the most important question to ask is what are your recovery time objectives (RTO)? What is the amount of time your application can afford to be down? If the applications have strict requirements, then you want an availability solution. Disaster recovery is data replication often times with a failover capability, not availability. For critical applications, this may not be sufficient.

Q: If I have an HA solution in place, do I still need a solution for backup?
Availability and backup are two different things. That question comes up a lot, along with the need for disaster recovery. Backup will never likely go away completely. You still need to backup your data to ensure recovery in the future should that be necessary.

Q: Is everRun available for Linux applications?
Yes. We can provide basic failover capabilities for Linux applications today.

Q: How does everRun differ from replication solutions?
everRun 2G is used for availability, both locally and for short-distance geographic separation as well. We have a replication and recovery solution as well that can be used for disaster recovery for long distances. You should determine what your objectives are: do I have to keep my applications up and running or do I just need to recover it if something fails? What’s the recovery time objective for each application? It’s up to your individual applications and what level of protection you need for each. Often times availability is a priority as downtime is not desirable, with DR also a requirement on top of that to ensure recovery in the event of a major outage.

Q: Can everRun be used for planned downtime (i.e. to keep one host running for end-users while the application on the other host is being upgraded)?
Yes, everRun can be used to help facilitate certain system updates to reduce interruptions and mitigate risk.

Q: Can it work between two virtual machines and on x64 based systems?
Yes, we support XenServer and 64-bit hardware and Windows Server environments.

Q: What is the performance impact of using everRun 2G?
That’s variable depending on your application. It can be anywhere from 3-15%. We’ve done some performance testing specifically on XenApp and Exchange. You can download those white papers here:
• Understanding and Characterizing Performance Implications for Running Exchange 2007 with everRun
• XenApp 5.0 High Availability Performance

Q: Does Marathon offer backup solutions for everRun users?
We have methods to backup your systems and we’re working improving on our current offerings to make them quicker, easier and more granular.

Q: Can everRun work with dissimilar hardware? Can everRun work with more than two servers?
From a server standpoint, you just need similar processors; storage does not need to be similar. You can have SAN on one side and NAS on the other or any other combination. On the second question, yes, everRun will work with more than two servers. You can build a pool of servers and protect within that pool.

Q: Does everRun have backward compatibility with older OS?
Yes. It will work with Windows Server 2003, and also Windows Server 2008.

Q: Can everRun run on the Foundation Server Edition of Windows 2008?
It does not. everRun supports the full implementation of Windows Server 2008. everRun runs underneath Windows, it does not install into Windows.

Q: How does everRun handle data stored on NAS?
Storage is transparent to everRun. We look at storage as just a LUN.

Q: What is difference between everRun HA and everRun 2G in Windos Server 2003?
The differences are the ability to create multiple workloads. HA can protect one workload. everRun 2G can protect multiple workloads. There is also a new and improved graphical interface with better reporting and management capabilities.

Q: Does everRun work with XenServer 5.5?
Yes, everRun works with XenServer 5.5.

Q: Are there any changes in WS 2008 & WS 2008 R2 in the way that HA improves?
Yes. You can find an overview of those changes directly from David Hanna of Microsoft in our recent webinar and white paper “The Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows Server 2008.” You can also read the Q&A with Microsoft from that webinar here.

Q: Is everRun 2G available for Microsoft Hyper-v?
We will provide support for Hyper-v in a future release.

Q: With applications using various DNS names, how does this solution integrate with DNS changes? (failover to remote office for true DR-different IP/network)
everRun availability solutions pairs systems within the same subnet of vLAN, eliminating the need to make any DNS changes.

Q: Question is tied to what permissions are needed to do a recovery. For recovery in active Directory most items need to replicate around that there was a change and we do not want to hand out Admin control over the domain(separation of access)
everRun is designed to not require any changes to Active Directory during or after a failure or recovery.

In case you missed it, we announced this week that Jim Welch, former IBM VP and GM, has joined Marathon as our new Presdient and CEO. To learn more about Jim and the future direction of the company under Jim’s leadership, be sure to check out some of the recent press coverage:

Xconomy, "Marathon Hopes to Go the Distance with New CEO"

Mass High Tech, "IBM vet Jim Welch named CEO at Marathon Technologies"

ZDnet, "Conversation with Marathon Technologies"

Worcester Business Journal, "Marathon Hires Former IBM Exec As CEO"

Thanks again to those who joined us for last week’s webinar, “How to Get at Least 2x Greater Cost Savings from Server Virtualization.” An on-demand recording is available to watch at your convenience (just click the link.)

We had a lot of good questions from our attendees during the Q&A portion of the webinar, which are summarized below.

How does everRun synchronize and how often?
everRun synchronizes as the data is written to the virtual machine. It’s not done on a time stamp. It is synchronously written to both physical hosts. We do a bit check to make sure both sides are written prior to responding back to the application, stating that it has been written, so that the data is always in a constant state and there is no data loss.

If I already have XenServer installed, can I install everRun on top of it, or do I need to reinstall XenServer?
everRun can be installed into existing XenServer environment. We do have resource pool requirements, so as long as you in a resource pool or can join yourself to a resource pool with a second server, or multiple servers for multiple host pools, we can be installed into an existing XenServer environment.

How does it support local storage? If the server that is hosting the storage goes down, what happens?
We mirror the virtual machine across two servers, so there are two copies of your virtual machine. Where we sit in dom0 (Xen domain zero), we have filter drivers sensing that type of situation. When using Level 2 protection with everRun, if you lose local storage, we leverage the copy of the info on the second server for zero downtime. If you were to lose the entire server, it would failover to the other side and start in Windows services. In Level 3, the same procedure applies to local storage. If you were to lose the entire server with Level 3, everRun allows it to simply continue functioning because we are running active-active.

Have you used this with a building automation system, such as Andover Controls Continuum which runs on a SQL Server?
We have a very large building automation practice here at Marathon and have worked with all flavors of SQL server. We have been working for years with building automation and security companies such as Johnson Controls, Tyco, Andover Controls, Siemens and many others. As long as the building system runs in Windows Server 2003 or 2008, we can provide availability for it with no custom scripts or custom coding.

What's the overhead with regards to CPU, memory, disk space of the host?
Generally in the 3-5% range. We’ve done some performance testing on XenApp and Exchange. You can download the results papers here:
• Understanding and Characterizing Performance Implications for Running Exchange 2007 with everRun
• XenApp 5.0 High Availability Performance

Can everRun be used with homegrown or custom applications?
Yes. everRun is completely transparent to the application and can support any and all Windows applications without any modifications, customizations, or scripting.

Can everRun protect a workload that is physical on one side and virtual on the other?
We do not support P2V today, but we have an ongoing research project on this topic. You can contact your sales rep for more info.

What is the maximum number of workloads that can be run using everRun?
The best way to answer this is to look at your virtualization planning assessment, including power capacity planning and hardware capacity planning. If you can support 10 virtual machines on a server, then you can support 10 virtual machines protected by everRun on that server with no problem. We also require a similar machine as the secondary server running on the same resource pool. It really comes down to how much your hardware capacity can handle.

How to take care of software corruption?
Because we are a synchronously written high availability solution, if there is software corruption on one side, we are going to replicate it to the other side. We sit at an asynchronous block-level filter driver location, so we have no ties to the software. So if it corrupts, it will corrupt on both sides.

Are you currently developing for Exchange 2010?
Yes, everRun will support Exchange 2010.

Does everRun support Small Business Server?
Yes we do. We’ve tested and qualified it for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server Edition.

Does everRun replicate all server data including application data like a SQL database?
Yes. We replicate synchronously at a block level. We sit inside dom0. We then send the info block level to the other side. We do a block check and then we check our bit map to make sure the blocks are synchronously written on ongoing basis.

Can everRun be installed on top of XenServer 5.5 ?
Yes. We will support 5.5 in our next release scheduled for September.

Can we achieve DR?
Marathon offers a couple of options for disaster recovery (DR). Our SplitSite product can be used for metropolitan/campus DR, up to 150 miles apart, depending on your network conditions. We also offer everRun DR, for DR sites that are more than 150 miles apart.

Is the disk mirroring full copy or delta?
Upon initial protection we do a full copy. After you have a failure, such as an iSCSI card failure, we will do a delta copy back over to what’s missing. If you lose the entire RAID set, then we will need to do a full copy again.

Is the price of implementation based on the server capacity?
You need to purchase a license for each server in the pool. In terms of virtual machines (VMs), the license covers as many VMs as you can support in a box.

Congratulations to Eric Layman of PNC Financial Services Group, the winner of a $50 American Express gift card for participating in our August survey on Windows Server 2008. To participate in future Marathon surveys, sign up for Marathon's monthly newsletter: http://www.marathontechnologies.com/news.html (see the right-hand column for sign-up.)

We're tallying the results of the survey now and will share our findings on Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V adoption in early September.

Douglas Brown of www.dabcc.com recently interviewed Michael Bilancieri, Senior Director of Products and Tom Reed, Senior Systems Engineer. Michael, Tom, and Doug discuss the Marathon everRun high availability solution, what's new, how it works, how it adds value to Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V, and much more.

Listen the Show

Our July 30th webinar “Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows Server 2008 Now” was very well attended, and as expected, generated a lot of good questions. So many questions, in fact, that we weren’t able to answer them all during the live Q&A portion of the webinar.

For your convenience, we’ve captured all of the questions below. Answers have been provided by our speakers, David Hanna, Infrastructure Architect at Microsoft, and Michael Bilancieri, Senior Director of Products at Marathon. The questions are grouped by topic, starting with Windows Server related questions and then Marathon everRun related questions following after.

How seamless is the migration from Windows Server 2003 to 2008?
It really depends on the workload. Active Directory upgrade is similar to the 2000 to 2003 upgrade, and should not be disruptive. Cluster migrations require a rebuild of the cluster. For IIS, many applications can be migrated easily. It’s best to look on Microsoft.com for migration info that is specific to your workload. Simply introducing a Windows Server 2008 server into a 2003 environment should be seamless.

Going from Windows Server 2003 to 2008, do you recommend upgrading or re-installing the operating system?
Microsoft supports an upgrade of the OS only – no applications. Most customers however, choose to reinstall with Windows Server.

What are the hardware requirements for this Windows Server 2008?
Minimum is a 1ghz processor, 512mb of RAM, and 20GB of disk space. Details can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/system-requirements.aspx

Do you have an actual laboratory so that I can practice Windows Server 2008?
You can find the TechNet Virtual Labs here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/bb512925.aspx

Any difficulties adding a Windows 2008 Server into a 2003 domain? Anything to watch out for?
Adding Windows Server 2008 Member servers to the domain should not be an issue. There are no special things to watch out for, until you start adding Domain controllers. Note that if you add a 2008 member server, and do not extend the schema, some things will be unavailable, like the enhanced DFS capabilities in 2008.

Where can I get a copy of the Windows Server 2008 trial version?
You can obtain the trial version here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/try-it.aspx. Starting August 20th, you will be able to get R2 in the same location.

Can I do in-place upgrade AD server 2003R2 to Server 2008 without any problem? Also, can I do that same thing with Exchange 2007 server on SRV2003R2?
Microsoft only supports the upgrade of the Operating System from 2003 to 2008. We do not support the upgrade of Windows Server 2003 with applications, so the Exchange 2007 upgrade would not be supported.

Is it possible to use the same imaging deployment method for Windows 2008 physical and virtual machines (in VMware) for consistent builds?
It is possible to use traditional imaging methods for physical and virtual, however in the virtual environment, most customers tend to use template Virtual Hard disks to deploy systems, as it is faster and more flexible than imaging.

What is the difference between GPO and NAP?
Group policy is a part of Active Directory that allows for management of users and computers. NAP, or network access protection provides endpoint health checking for network clients. This integrates with network components to restrict or allow network access. Client NAP configurations can be controlled by GPO, and some GPO settings can be enforced by NAP.

Does NAP work for VPN connections as well?
Yes. It is integrated with Microsoft VPN as well as some partner solutions.

Does XP pro and 2008 Server talk well together? What’s a better path, upgrade your clients to Win7 then servers to 2008? Or vice versa?
XP will work in a 2008 domain environment, but it won’t be able to take advantage of all of the features of 2008. Vista is designed to complement 2008, and Windows 7 works best with 2008 R2 (or 2008). I would recommend deploying Windows Server 2008 for workloads that will gain the most benefit – this will allow you take advantage of it immediately. Then follow with Windows 7 when you are ready.

Do terminal servers have central management to manage users and applications?
There are a number of tools to centrally manage the environment. R2 adds a connection broker component that will publish apps from multiple servers. However, apps still need to be published on each server, and permissions need to be set that way as well. Citrix provides some great centralized mgmt tools that enhance the native tools.

Will 2008 support XP clients?
Yes. 2008 will support XP for many things including Terminal Services, with RDP 6.1 client, NAP, with XP Sp3, Group policy preferences and many other features. Windows Vista and Windows 7 however, are able to take advantage of more features.

I have two Windows 2008 servers that are going to be setup as a cluster for Exchange 2007. Is there a document for setting up the “heartbeat” connection between the two servers?
There are many documents on technet that will help. When you build the cluster, the validation wizard will check the configuration of the heartbeat network to make sure its configured appropriately. Typically, a 2 node cluster will use a cross-over cable, although a non-routed VLAN on a switch also works. Some docs:

Step-by-step guide for basic 2-node cluster: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731844(WS.10).aspx
Validating an Exchange 2007 Cluster: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb676379.aspx

Is Server 2008 with Exchange supported on VMware?
Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows 2008 is supported – see here for details: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm

Is it possible to run a 2008 DC with 2003 DCs without any sort of hacks or work-arounds?
Yes – it is possible. You’ll need to extend the AD Schema and install a 2008 member server, then promote it to a DC. There are some documents here: https://blogs.msdn.com/canberrapfe/archive/2009/04/08/adding-a-2008-domain-controller-to-your-2003-forest.aspx

Regarding the NAP, once a client is quarantined, is there a policy or rule that the admin must create to get the client healthy? Meaning, is it automatic or does the client sit there until someone checks the quarantined clients and fixes the issues?
NAP can be configured to auto-remediate certain things – turning firewall on, turning on autoupdate, etc. For AV, or patches, users can be directed to a web page with simple instructions or links to update the client.

Has load balancing improved with 2008 and TS?
It has been made simpler. Many customers found NLB to be complicated for what was needed on Terminal Services. TS on 2008 uses DNS round robin for initial connection with the TS Farm, then load balancing across nodes is handled by using RDP session load balancing.

How many CALs are included in the bundle of Windows Server 2008?
There are different bundles with 5, 10, or 25 CALS. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/pricing.aspx

How many machines can run on a single user MS Windows Server 2008, because we want to move to VMware soon.
Microsoft supports up to 192 VMs on Windows Server 2008, and 384 on Windows Server 2008 R2. Typically numbers will not be anywhere near this, as other system resources will bottleneck. Details can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx#HyperVWindowsServer2008Specific

Is MS Windows Server 2008 VMware built-in?
Microsoft’s virtualization solution, Hyper-V, is built in to Windows Server 2008 and R2.

How would Hyper-V handle the VMware over committing resources, for example, is ESX server only have 8GB RAM but it can assign 16GB RAM to the VMs because it holds the memory and only releases it when it is required. The main reason for Exchange on a ESX box is not a good idea.
Hyper-V does not support over-commit of memory resources. To assign 8gb of RAM to a VM, you must have 8gb available. This improves performance and security.

What happens when a file which has been transferred/shared to a branch using Branch Cache is opened in the main office? Will the branch be informed about this and vice versa?
When clients use branch cache, each file is referenced by a hash. When a client tries to retrieve a file from the central office, it checks the hash of the file, then compares it to what is in the local cache. If the file has changed, then the hash would have changed, and the client would retrieve the updated version. The branch is not informed if the central copy is opened, only if it is changed, through the hash mechanism.

What is the maximum supported DFS server in 2008? In 2003 I think it is less than 70GB and that was not enough for me.
The File Replication Service in Windows Server 2003 had trouble with replication when data sizes got too big. Windows Server 2008 uses DFS-R (Distributed File System Replication) for replication – this uses an algorithm call Remote Differential Compression, which compresses files, and replicates only changes. This makes replication more efficient, an able to support large volumes of data. The limits that existed in 2003 for data size are either removed, or raised greatly.

What is the standard vs. reduced footprint for Windows 2008?
Processor requirements for Server Core and full Windows Server 2008 are the same. Minimum memory recommendations of 512mb are also the same. While the system requirements on Microsoft.com don’t list separate requirements for Server Core, it typically requires less disk space than a full installation. Additionally, Server Core has fewer roles to install (only 9), fewer services running, and has no GUI.

Are there any plans to integrate snapshot technology within Hyper-V?
Hyper-V already supports snapshots at two levels. First, it supports snapshots of the Virtual Machine itself, through use of memory copies and differential disks. The other snapshot capability is a snapshot backup, performed by the host Hyper-V system, using Volume Shadowcopy Services to back up the running VMs.

When will Hyper-V R2 be released?
Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V R2 released to manufacturing on July 22nd. General Availability will be in October. Volume license customers should have access to the code on August 19th. More details are available here: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/07/22/when-to-expect-windows-server-2008-r2-rtm.aspx

Can everRun protect a workload that is physical on one side and virtual on the other?
everRun does not install INTO a Windows system, so it isn’t able to protect a ‘physical’ system in this sense. Many of our customers choose to keep some of their applications isolated to a physical server with no other applications or VMs on that host while protecting them with everRun. This is done by creating a single Windows environment within the everRun environment. Although the capability is there to create multiple, a single is the desired approach.

How does everRun handle data stored on NAS?
everRun can use any product data that resides on any type of storage. everRun sees the storage repository as a disk volume and can mirror between any two.

How many licenses for the operating system do I need for this solution? Do I need two licenses for the application (i.e. Exchange) as well?
Typically two licenses of Windows are required, however the Enterprise edition provides benefits when running in virtual environments. Please check with Microsoft on this and with your application vendors as all vendors have different licensing terms for redundant/high availability systems.

How well does everRun work with dissimilar hardware (i.e. at the DR site using older servers)?
There are some requirements for similar server components. If two supported servers are utilized and one happens to have a slower processor, the application may run at the slower speed, depending on the level of protection chosen within everRun.

Does everRun replicate all server data including application data like SQL databases?
Yes. The entire operating environment and all disks, including the OS, application, and application data are mirrored.

Is everRun effective for small companies? For example, an Exchange environment for less than 200 users?
Absolutely. Many of our customers are smaller to mid-sized businesses who require an availability solution that is simple, effective, and doesn’t require SAN storage or dedicated IT staff to manage.

Does everRun support MS Small Business Server?
Yes. Our everRun solution will work with any version of Windows Server, 64-bit or 32-bit. We work for small scale solutions all the way up to enterprises.

Will everRun support Exchange 2010 DAG location geographically?
We are still researching Exchange 2010 capabilities and how they can best be supported by everRun. At this time we are not yet clear on how DAG will or can be supported.

How are system upgrades handled in the everRun environment?
A single upgrade is performed on the single exposed Windows environment. Both of the redundant systems will be updated automatically by everRun. everRun also offers mechanisms to reduce the risk and associated downtime of system upgrades.

How does the actual SQL server app run in the everRun environment?
Exactly the same as it does in a non-everRun environment. everRun sits below the Windows environment therefore there are no application changes required.

The everRun software sounds great, but it requires two physical servers. Any hope of moving forward to do the same work within a VMware or Hyper-V environment?
Today everRun supports virtualized environments running on Citrix XenServer. We announced a joint development agreement with Microsoft back in early 2009 to provide everRun Fault Tolerance within a future version of Windows/Hyper-V.

How is everRun migrated with Windows 2008 hypervisor?
everRun will support a future Windows/Hyper-V release as part of the joint development effort between Microsoft and Marathon.

What system resources are used by everRun?
A small (varies a bit by the application that is running) bit of CPU and memory overhead is consumed by everRun.
 

When planning your VM workloads, you should be aware of what level of availability each server will need. By splitting the amount of users across multiple VM’s you can provide a level of availability to each set of users based upon your SLA with each business unit in your company. Looking back to the availability pyramid you can choose which level of availability for each mailbox server is needed. For example if you have an executive group that needs to be up with a 24/7 uptime and only limited downtime then level 3 should be your selection on a separate mailbox server. If all of your business units require the same level of availability and have the same SLA in place then you will split your mailbox servers according to usage. Using the chart from section one we can split the users based upon the type of user. For example if you have 1,000 heavy users we would assign 2 vCPU’s to the virtual machine. Always follow Microsoft best practices when deploying the amount of users per core or vCPU.

If we look at Figure 1 we can see that that we have 4 active VM’s spread across two servers with 2 vCPU’s assigned to each. Looking at the example chart above and using figure one we can see that this design example would support 4,000 “Heavy users”. We achieve this by allowing our storage groups on each mailbox VM to support 1,000 “Heavy” users.

Let’s take a look at a basic design with 3 separate types of users spread across 4 servers. We have an executive mailbox store, a mid-management store, and a general user store. In looking over what each teams HA requirement is we have come to the following, the executive team needs 24/7 up time with no downtime except for a maintenance window once a month. The mid-management team can handle some downtime, but only a few minutes each week. The general users have no HA requirement they can be down for an hour a week if needed. So how do we decided what level of availability we would like to use, it’s easy we simply look at the application availability pyramid and we put the appropriate mailbox store at each level:

By using this simple plan you can simplify you’re HA strategy for Exchange. By distributing the mailbox stores across multiple servers on the same hardware you can save rack space as well as provide individual levels of availability based upon different business unit needs.

We had a lot of great questions during the Q & A session of our February webinar with Stephanie Balaouras of Forrester Research. We’ve posted the questions and responses here on our blog for everyone’s benefit.

Questions from the webinar:

Q: In the architecture two "mirrored" VMs are shown which are connected. Does that mean that you have to install 2 application VM servers or do you have to install just one and Marathon makes the second?
A: You only need to create one application VM. After this is created, you can use everRun to protect that application. As part of the protection process, everRun creates a “cloned” instance of the application on the second host. The instance is completely identical to the original, with the same identity, MAC address, resources, etc. It is this redundancy created by everRun that protects the applications.

Q: In the Marathon license there is HA and FT. In which are the levels 1-2-3 available?
A: Levels 1, 2, and 3 are available in a single solution called everRun VM and any level of protection can be enabled on a VM. everRun VM level 3 protection will be available in Q2.

Q: The licensing question you just answered seems different from what you used previously. You previously only had to license the VMs OS in a fully protected system. Please explain.
A: Microsoft licensing requires a valid Windows license for each side of the protected VM. Using Enterprise Edition can reduce the number of licenses required. Please refer to Microsoft licensing terms for specific details for your environment.

Q: How does the software communicate between disparate storage NAS to DAS, SATA to Fibre Channel?
A: everRun does not limit you to needing matching storage requirements on multiple hosts. Communication between hosts is done through Availability Links (A-Links), which are private networks between each host. everRun handles the mirroring at the host level, passing I/O through XenServer to write to the disks. The type of disk or connection is not relevant.

Q: How does this compare to VMWare's SRM & VDM products?
A: VMware SRM provides a mechanism to restart a VM on an alternate host, however it relies on other storage mirroring solutions (often within the storage system) to perform the mirroring. SRM does not move data or provide a comprehensive HA or FT solution.

Q: Is the product host based or a fabric based solution?
A: everRun VM is a host based solution, with a minimum of 2 hosts required.

Q: Do you need to keep a warm copy of the applications at the DR site?
A: During the protection process, everRun takes the chosen VM and clones it to the designate secondary host. This creates a complete and identical instance on the secondary host. everRun maintains these two synchronously so that they are always identical. everRun’s unique architecture exposes these two mirrored instances as a single entity; there is no need to install, manage, or update both sides, only the one single instance of the OS/application. Should the entire ‘primary’ host fail, the ‘secondary’ host will immediately start the cloned version. It comes up with the same IP address, hostname, and MAC address of the primary so that there are no client-side, DNS, Active Directory, or other infrastructure changes required.

Q: Is the DATA synchronous like SRDF or near synchronous?
A: everRun performs synchronous mirroring of the entire Windows environment, including the OS, application, and data.

Q: How does this compare to products like RecoverPoint/Replistore, InMage, Neverfail, Falconstor etc?
A: These products are disaster recovery products intended for long-distant asynchronous data replication and failover. everRun availability solutions provide true availability in a comprehensive and automated manner. Marathon also offers DR solutions for long-distant protection. Disaster recovery and availability are mutually exclusive in most cases and should generally be considered separately. They are complimentary more than competing solutions.

Q: What is the software support plan? What are the recurring costs for your product year to year?
A: We offer a Premier support plan or a Basic support plan. The only recurring cost year to year is the cost of support.

Q: What are the operating system requirements, how many copies of the OS do you need?
A: Each Windows environment is mirrored to a secondary host, requiring a second Windows license. Using Enterprise Edition of Windows allows for fewer licensed copies. Please refer to your Windows licensing terms for specific requirements.

Q: Regarding the 10ms sync time, what happens if that time increases to say 20ms due to network traffic?
A: If the latency increases beyond our requirement the paired systems may assume that one system is down and redundancy may be lost. In a properly configured environment the application should remain running while the secondary system is no longer maintained in a redundant fashion. Once the latency returns to within spec, the systems will re-sync automatically and return to a fully redundant state. Typically the application is not impacted.

Q: What are the bandwidth requirements?
A: Best practices state 155MB link between the two hosts. For local systems a simple crossover cable between the two systems is sufficient. When separating the systems the 155MB requirement becomes more relevant. This number can vary depending on the applications being protected and the amount of data being managed.

Q: Do you have instances of numerous geo-available solutions with specific applications?
A: Here are two examples:
MAN AG success story with everRun SplitSite
Chester County, PA success story with SplitSite

Q: Is windows Server 2008 VM supported? If not, why?
A: Windows Server 2008 64-bit will be supported in Q2 of this year.

We had a lot of great questions during the Q & A session of our January webinar with one of our customers. We’ve posted the questions and responses here on our blog for everyone’s benefit.

Questions for The Sullivan Group:

Q: Which everRun product are they running? everRun HA or FT?
A: everRun VM

Q: How did you migrate your VMware VMs to XenServer?
A: We used a V2V software migration tool from Visioncore that worked really well.

Q: What was the procedure when bringing back up one of the servers when the RAID card failed. How easy was it?
A: It couldn’t have been easier. Once we repaired the failed component, everRun identified it and put it back into use. everRun used a mirror copy to bring the two systems back in complete synchronization. This all happened without our intervention and without impacting our users.

Q: Was a short implementation time a demand from The Sullivan Group, and what was the expectations before the implementation?
A: Short implementation time wasn’t a hard requirement. We expected the implementation to take a couple of weeks and were pleasantly surprised when we had it all up and running in a little less than a week.

Questions for Marathon:

Q: Is there a special license for SQL? Or any other special considerations?
A: Special licensing for the applications you protect is not required. You should refer to the SQL license agreement or the agreement for the application on the VM that you are protecting. With everRun, only one instance of the application is running at any one time.

Q: Is this active active or active passive?
A: We refer to it as ‘active/ready’. The secondary VM is in a paused state, however disk and network I/O are being processed. This allows everRun to deliver fault tolerance at the component level, while immediately starting the paused VM fully in the event of a full host failure on the primary side.

Q: Do you have to install everRun prior to your application, so if I already have an application installed would I need to rebuild the production server? IF so does this change the install time and impact?
A: Assuming you have a VM set up on a host, the application can be installed before or after the VM is protected with everRun. The protection process does require the VM to be shutdown prior to beginning the protect process, however the process takes about 2 minutes to complete after which time the VM can be restarted.

Q: How does everRun handle Software or OS hangs?
A: everRun does not monitor applications.

Q: In your opinion what is the strongest difference between this and MS Clustering?
A: MS Clustering can be a nice fit, especially with applications such as SQL Server. One of the requirements for MSCS is shared storage, or a SAN. This requirement can push the cost out of reach for many small and midsized businesses. everRun does not require shared storage and can utilize any type of storage the customer may have or intend to purchase. In addition, everRun provides fault tolerance and not just failover restart. This helps to minimize interruptions typically caused by failed devices.

Q: Does everRun VM support Windows x64 architecture on VM?
A: Yes, everRun and XenServer support 64-bit hardware and software.

Q: Can VM run Windows 2008 x64? Or Windows 2003 x64?
A: Citrix XenServer supports VMs running Windows 2008 64-bit and Windows 2003 64-bit. Currently everRun VM can protect VM’s running Windows Server 2003, 32-bit and 64-bit. Our next release planned for calendar Q2 09 will support Windows Server 2008 32-bit and 64-bit VM’s.

Q: How much overhead do you have when you protect a VM?
A: When protecting a VM you are able to define how much of a particular resource is to be utilized and reserved. This helps to reduce the amount of resources required for protecting VM’s. Performance overhead can vary depending on if it is I/O heavy, CPU heavy, what the application is, etc. Typically however performance overhead is not impactful.

Q: Is everRun tied to a VM on a particular physical XenServer, what would happen if you used XenServer technology to move to another physical server?
A: Once a VM is protected with everRun, it is hard-configured to two physical hosts. everRun allows online migration of the active VM between these two hosts without interruption. To move one or both VM’s in the protected pair to a different host would require it to be unprotected, migrated if necessary, and protected again with the new host.

Q: Please speak about XenServer integration, process for failover to DR site?
A: everRun has a tight integration with XenServer. everRun is installed on top of XenServer and is completely compatible and able to protect Windows VMs created in XenCenter. During the protection process, everRun takes the chosen VM and clones it to the designate secondary host. This creates a complete and identical VM on the secondary host. everRun maintains these two VM synchronously so that they are always identical. everRun’s unique architecture exposes these two mirrored VM’s as a single VM; there is no need to install, manage, or update both sides, only the one single instance of the OS/application. Should the entire ‘primary’ host fail, the ‘secondary’ host will immediately start the cloned VM. It comes up with the same IP address, hostname, and MAC address of the primary so that there are no client-side, DNS, Active Directory, or other infrastructure changes required.

Q: Will everRun run on x64?
A: Yes, it requires 64-bit servers.

Q: I assume the servers must match i.e. memory, HD space and memory as well as other array controllers and type of arrays?
A: The only requirement for similarities within the servers is same family of processors. everRun can mirror storage between dissimilar storage types and vendors, allowing lower-cost storage to be deployed on the ‘secondary’ host.

Q: Is everRun for virtual servers XenServer specific, or does it work with Hyper-V, Virtual Iron, etc.?
A: Today everRun is developed for XenServer. In January we announced a development and marketing agreement with Microsoft, we will be developing an everRun product for Hyper-V as well.

Q: What if the server is up but a single app on the server fails? Also, how do you detect the app failed?
A: everRun does not monitor applications. However if by ‘single app’ you mean a single VM, everRun does protect at the individual VM level. If a VM fails yet the host and other VM’s remain alive, everRun can restart the VM on the secondary host.

Q: Do you have to purchase redundant licenses for the applications that you have replication as Virtual Machines across two physical servers? For example, do you have to purchase double the Exchange licenses to do it or just the licenses as if you had a single server?
A: You would need to refer to the license agreement for each application. With everRun, the application is running as a single instance and many vendors don’t require two licenses, but this varies between vendors.

Q: Can you have full fault tolerance on XenApp servers between 2 datacenters, where users would not be disconnected from their session if a failover occurred?
A: everRun can certainly protect XenApp as it can protect any Windows application. A number of customers are using everRun to protect XenApp today. The ability to separate between data centers (there are latency requirements due the synchronous nature of everRun) will be available in Q2. To prevent session disconnects will require Level 3 protection, or full System-Level Fault Tolerance, which will also be available for everRun VM in Q2.

Q: Can the VM servers be in different data centers across a WAN behind firewalls?
A: The ability to separate servers geographically will be available in Q2.

Q: Are there general guidelines on the number of VM's that can be protected between two host machines? I'm thinking of SQL Server systems hosting highly transactional databases.
A: The answer to this is dependent on the applications running within the VM’s, hardware, and activity within them, so providing a set number of VM’s would not be practical. Please contact Marathon if you would like to discuss your environment to better understand what VM limits may be suitable.

Q: How can you use the USB interface, for example when software requires a dongle?
A: everRun does not redirect the USB interface to a protected VM.

For healthcare organizations and their IT departments, almost everything is mission critical, from patient information to registration systems and records management. Information needs to be readily available and data has to protected at all times to avoid compliance risk or calamitous consequences.

From what we’ve seen, the interest in virtualization for high availability and disaster recovery is driven by two key factors: cost savings and greater demand for 24x7 availability of health records. Like so many organizations in this tough economy, health care providers are under tremendous pressure to deliver the same quality services at lower cost. Using server virtualization for server consolidation can help. And the VMotion and XenMotion capability in VMware and XenServer respectively can provide these organizations with DR that is significantly easier to deploy and execute. On top of XenServer they can add everRun VM for fault tolerant, high availability protection that is much more affordable and practical than what they have had in the past.

Testament of the increased interest in virtualization from healthcare organizations comes from our own experiences here at Marathon. We’ve seen a positive uptake in healthcare customers who are deploying everRun VM to protect their virtual environments. Currently, about 30% of new customers that are in Marathon’s pipeline for sales are in the healthcare related space. We can only assume that the number of healthcare customers we service will continue to grow as we venture into 2009.

The changes these organizations are making are allowing them to stay ahead of the competition as they increase efficiency, ensure the availability of patient records and most importantly set the standard for inpatient and outpatient care.

Are you part of a healthcare organization that is starting to deploy server virtualization? Is more effective HA and DR a key goal?

Using the Adobe Flex framework, Marathon teamed with UI Foundry to develop a rich Internet application (RIA) console that manages and monitors the world’s first fault-tolerant, high availability software (everRun VM) for server virtualization. The software integrates with Citrix XenServer environments, all through one-click operation.

“The value proposition of using Adobe Flex lies in how we cost-effectively built a rich, elegant user interface that consolidates and simplifies huge amounts of data across complex server environments – positioning our product line even further ahead of the product curve.”- Jerry Melnick, CTO, Marathon

 

See the complete case study on Adobe’s site here.

Business continuity planning ranks among the top trends in a recent Dimension Data report on contact center technology. Yet many call centers aren’t equipped to deal with unexpected downtime from a system failure. These centers would lose productivity and sacrifice service levels when mission-critical tools like real-time reporting systems go dark.

Real-time reporting provider Inova Solutions, along with new partner Marathon Technologies, will host a webinar to discuss best practices for business continuity and high availability in the contact center. Presenter Scott Thompson from Marathon Technologies will discuss how to protect your real-time reporting investment from costly downtime and data loss.

Participants can register for the webinar here. Details are below:

What: Webinar: “Assessing the Impact of Planned and Unplanned Downtime in the Contact Center”
When: Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 2:00 pm EST

via Inova Solutions website.

This video was created by the Citrix UK and Marathon UK team’s to help IT understand how XenServer and everRun provide a better way to run business-critical and mission-critical applications in virtual environments. After watching the video, feel free to leave us any other questions you might have.