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Blog

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.

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?

Marathon’s team at VMworld got to sit in on the VMworld session Tuesday morning that covered VMware’s newly announced technology for fault tolerant VMs. While not bad for FT rookies, from what we saw, it’s a less than perfect solution for a lot companies that want to run business critical and mission critical applications in VMs. Let’s look at the four primary reasons why.

1. No component-level fault tolerance. The most common failures that result in unplanned downtime are component failures such as storage, NIC or controller failures. Yet VMware Fault Tolerance doesn’t do anything to protect against I/O, storage or network failures. By not addressing these primary sources of failures, VMware appears to be saying that you/the customer are on your own do figure out how to protect your storage and network connections. This may be okay for the very largest IT staffs in the world, but for the other 98%; it will not be sufficient.

2. Complexity on top of complexity. In order to use VMware Fault Tolerance, you’ll first have to install both VMware HA and DRS. No small feat in and of themselves. Then, because VMware FT requires NIC teaming, you’ll also have to manually install paired NICs. Then you’ll need to manually setup dual storage controllers (with the software to manage them) because it requires multi-pathing. And to top it all off, you’re required to use an expensive, and often complicated, SAN.

3. Limited CPU fault tolerance. With VMware FT, you’ll need to setup what VMware refers to as a “record/replay” capability on both a primary and secondary server. If something happens to the primary server, the record is stored on the SAN and then restarted on the secondary server. Two things to point out here. First, the whole thing depends on the quality of the SAN. Second, in the words of the VMware engineer who presented at VMworld, “this can take a couple of seconds.” So what happens to your application state in those couple of seconds?

4. For VMware virtual environments only. VMware FT will only work in VMware environments. It won't work with other hypervisors, and most importantly, you can't use for business critical and mission critical applications that you want to keep on physical server platforms (i.e., non-virtualized environments which still represent the vast majority of customer use cases). Oh well, only the vast majority of critical applications run in physical environments anyway.

It’s great to see VMware recognizing the need for fault tolerance, but we’re puzzled why they decided not to address the biggest source of failures – component failure. And we wonder how many mid-market companies will be able to justify the cost and complexity of getting VMware FT setup and keep it running.

If you had a chance to attend the session what were your thoughts?

VMworld 2008 is an essential event for any IT professional looking for the latest products and innovations in virtualization technology – and we are readily preparing to demonstrate what we’ve got.

As a result of increased adoption and further consolidation, the virtualization market has grown tremendously, increasing the spectrum of presenters and attendees alike. Based on this growth, I expect to see more value-add products, more new start-ups and technologies. In previous years, the attention has been on hypervisors. Now, I think the emphasis will be on tools and layered products that sit on top of the hypervisor, such as availability, management and monitoring tools.

Are you a VMworld Rookie? Here’s a tip – Past shows have left me feeling that a lot of vendors make grand claims regarding their products and services, but many are still very early in the development stage. Everyone uses similar buzzwords – business continuity, disaster recovery, high availability, management, etc. These are all fairly broad terms and vendors use some form or hybrid of each at their booths and in their presentations to lure you in to hear “the pitch.” Finding solution providers who have real customers, products, references, and established technology is a much more productive approach when attending the event.

When it comes down to it, a lot of past VMworld happenings involve the issue of hype vs. reality. The challenge for anyone who is going to walk the halls, talk to vendors, and attend sessions is the ability to validate what is reality vs. what is hype.

I’ll be attending several sessions at VMworld, but I am most eager to attend the session where VMware will announce their fault-tolerant technology. I think that will be a beneficial session to all event attendees. Our assumption at Marathon is that it will be something like a fault management or fault handling system –something on a similar level to what we do. But this is definitely an advantage for us – it helps to validate what we have been saying for 18 months. As the market leader in virtualization, VMware sees the same problem as Marathon – customers need and are requiring more protection for applications that get consolidated. Traditional failover environments aren’t sufficient for the higher value applications.

If you have any recommendations for VMworld sessions, please leave me a comment and let me know – I’m always open for suggestions. And if you have any questions or if you see me walking around, don’t hesitate to reach out - I’d love to connect with you.

Every year Windows IT Pro magazine talks with hundreds of vendors, attends dozens of product demos and reviews some of the best products out in the Windows market. All the products the Windows IT Pro staff has identified can help IT professionals do their jobs faster and more efficiently. This year we are pleased to announce that everRun VM has been chosen as a bronze winner in the virtualization category. Here’s what our CEO Gary Philips had to say:

“Given all of the innovative virtualization companies considered for this award, we are honored to be named a Windows IT Pro Editors’ Best Award winner in the virtualization category. This award is the tenth industry award we have received in the past year, a testament to the importance and value of what we are doing to help companies reduce costs and ensure the availability of their applications.”

Other winners in our category include Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (gold winner) and VMware ThinApp (silver winner).

With Microsoft’s Hyper-V announcement a few weeks back, the buzz around virtualization continues to rise. In this Network World podcast, our CTO Jerry Melnick discusses what Microsoft’s announcement means for the virtualization industry. Jerry believes that Microsoft’s moves will bring virtualization within reach of many companies who have been hesitant about adopting it before now – giving Microsoft the opportunity to swim in uncharted waters where VMware hasn’t been able to go.

The podcast also highlights Jerry’s take on the thriving virtualization industry and how the growing virtualization ecosystem is creating solutions that “fill in the blanks” e.g. everRun VM allows customers of all sizes to “consolidate with confidence” with reliable availability for virtual servers.

Do you think availability is a critical factor for a successful virtualization deployment?

• The path forward: Weathering the perfect storm - Network World
  Steve Taylor of Network World offers helpful steps that IT organizations can take to minimize the ”perfect storm's” impact on applications.
  (tags: virtualization recovery backup)
• The state of IT: Primed for uncertainty | InfoWorld | Analysis | 2008-05-27 | By Dan Tynan
  A survey of the current IT landscape suggests that tech departments are well prepared to weather whatever comes their way in the next year, and that IT -- thanks to lessons learned from the last downturn -- is much more resistant to economic uncertainty t
  (tags: IT_Management)
• Microsoft a distant third in mock debate on virtualization
  VMware, Xen win hearts and minds of IT execs at Forrester show

  (tags: vmware xen)
• Virtualization Report | David Marshall | InfoWorld | New research report shows increased spending on virtualization | May 27, 2008 07:31 AM | David Marshall
  New research report shows increased spending on virtualization
  (tags: virtualization)

• Citrix's Xen won't cede to VMware or Hyper-V
  How will Citrix Systems Inc.'s XenServer fare against more its more entrenched rival -- VMware -- and larger competition -- Microsoft's Hyper-V -- in a face-off on virtualization pricing?
  (tags: citrix virtualization vmware)
• The challenge of virtualization
  Steve Taylor discusses the “impending perfect storm” of implementing virtualization as a key initiative in IT organizations- it’s beneficial yet ends up in a place where practical purposes applications cease to function.
  (tags: virtualization)
• Hottest IT Job Market: Virtualization
  Amid the economic gloom of 2008, the IT job market is holding steady, with perhaps some modest contraction.
  (tags: virtualization)

As demand rises for IT managers and C-level executives to embrace virtualization, we thought it would be worthwhile to share our insights into adopting server virtualization. The tips below are designed to help companies determine if server virtualization is right for them and how they should prepare to ensure a successful initial implementation.

Tip #1 – Make the business case for server virtualization

Before implementing server virtualization, IT executives should assess whether the technology will provide a reasonable return on investment. They should first take a look at how they are using servers today and ask themselves:

• Do they have common applications running on a number of different servers?
• Do they have enough servers that could and should be consolidated? Is the number of applications increasing and the capacity required for the applications continuing to expand?
• Do they expect the number of servers they have to buy each year to increase? If so, by how much?
• Is the business planning to undertake other large-scale technology implementations, and if so, how will this fit with a possible virtualization development?

In short, the IT department has to make a strong business case and justify the virtualization investment to ensure executive management support. To help conduct a quick assessment, ROI calculators are available from VMware and Marathon. Marathon also has a webinar available with John Humphreys, Program Vice President, Virtualization Software for IDC, “Making the Business Case for Server Virtualization,” in which John provides essential guidance in making your business case.

Tip #2 – Consider the license and support implications

IT managers need investigate what, if any, impact virtualization will have on their application licenses and support. Depending on the application, the original licensing terms and conditions may no longer apply after the applications have been migrated to the virtualized environment. In addition, it may be that the providers of some of the software applications do not support virtualization systems, and are unwilling to offer technical support for the applications after the migration to a virtualized environment.

Tip #3 – Afford to spend the time to plan

As any IT professional knows, implementing a new system requires dedicated resources, budget and time. Industry experts have estimated that the planning stage constitutes 90% of a virtualization implementation project. The actual migration is relatively simple to undertake provided that the implementation has been well-planned. Any system information to be migrated should be collated and backed-up up to six months before the start of the migration. IT managers should remember to assess how much hardware each virtual machine needs in order to operate efficiently. They also need to ensure that the number of virtual environments residing in a single hardware does not sprawl out of control - this could have serious consequences on the stability of the environment and application availability. A thorough implementation plan will help businesses minimize any hiccups that might arise.

Tip #4 – Assess levels of application availability and risk to business continuity

Despite the many benefits of virtualization, businesses are beginning to realize that there are risks associated with the technology. While virtualization is useful for protecting applications from planned downtime, protecting virtual environments from unplanned downtime is a different matter. Today, the cost of just a few minutes of unplanned downtime can be hugely detrimental and with virtual environments the risk is greater because server consolidation often results in a single point of failure for multiple applications. Businesses should therefore consider a solution that combines virtualization technology with the high availability protection necessary to keep the business going through disruptions.

Tip #5 – Demonstrate that virtualization won’t impact end users

After the implementation, it is critical to demonstrate to executive management that virtualization can be accomplished without hindering applications performance and without diminishing service to end users. IT managers should monitor closely the performance of initial deployments, and if necessary, modify hardware and networking configurations to ensure that the virtual environment is completely transparent to end-users.

Emerging virtualization technologies are opening doors by removing existing barriers of entry such as cost and complexity. More and more businesses of different sizes are starting to reap the benefits of server virtualization. But, before embarking on a virtualization project, organizations should assess their needs carefully, choose the right technology, make sure the implementation doesn’t impact end user performance - and start small.

If you have additional tips or recommendations that have helped you and your organization successfully deploy server virtualization, please leave a comment here and join the discussion!

A common question we get from analysts and something that continues to come up in discussions (see Brian Madden’s blog) is why we developed everRun VM for XenSource and not VMware. One of the biggest obstacles in developing a version of our software for protecting virtual environments was making a strategic decision on which hypervisor platform to develop for initially. Some of the key factors that weighed in on our decision were:

• Virtualization platform market share
• Robustness of the virtualization platform
• Performance of the virtualization platform
• Openness of the architecture
• Virtualization vendor’s approach to partnerships
• Compatibility with future Microsoft virtualization platforms

Although VMware was the clear market leader, for most of the criteria, XenSource (now Citrix Virtualization and Management Division) was a much better fit. To acheive the superior availability that everRun VM uniquely provides, it had to be tightly integrated with the hypervisor, the openness of the architecture was very important. And since our solution would be directed at virtualizing applications that weren’t being virtualized yet, in part due to concerns about their performance in virtual machines, the near “bare-metal” performance of XenServer was also a major advantage. XenSource’s philosophy of growing through an ecosystem of technology partners gave us the confidence that they would get the technical, management and marketing support required to achieve our time-to-market objectives. Finally, because of the company’s relationship with Microsoft and the planned interoperability between the XenServer platform and Microsoft’s Hyper-V, we are confident that developing for XenServer now would provide the shortest path to supporting Microsoft Hyper-V when it becomes available.

If you have any additional questions feel free to leave us a comment.

We all know that the “buzzword” of 2008 is virtualization and that CIO’s are rifling through piles of information to determine the best fit for their organization. But what about companies like Citrix and VMware who produce the virtual environments? What are their plans for 2008?

Tarry Singh discusses some of his predictions for the industry here. What’s interesting to note is his foresight into the HA market and the growing need for player’s in the industry, like VMware, to utilize virtualization management applications as enhancements to their existing systems. Check out this post which highlights visions for 2008 from Simon Crosby (Citrix) and Dr. Mendel Roseblum (VMware).

Bill Murray’s character said it best in What About Bob, “Baby Steps” – In case you missed it, this week we announced our partnership with ADN, the largest Citrix distributor in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). ADN specializes in thin-client technologies. By incorporating the XenServer hypervisor and Marathon’s fault tolerant-class availability, ADN can now provide full-thin client packages for enterprises and medium sized companies.

How are we one step closer to VMWare? According to the folks at ADN, they are in the process of selling the XenServer Enterprise virtualization platform in the EMEA market – a market where VMWare has decided they are not looking to extend their current reseller base. This puts ADN in a prime position to work with the majority of EMEA companies that have not yet adopted virtualization, putting both Marathon and Citrix at their fingertips. :)

Read the full release here.

September has been a whirlwind of activity for the Virtualization and High Availability space…

• The success of VMworld (which saw attendance increase to 11,000 from 7,000 last year according to Allesandro Perilli at Virtualization.Info)
• AppCon 2007 to discuss the needs of mid-market IT Professionals responsible for assuring high availability and disaster recovery of business-critical applications
• And more importantly, the glamorous stuff that comes with a growing industry… Like TV Appearances (Gary Phillips on NECN) and Magazine Interviews (Steve Keilen in Processor Magazine)

It’s been a great month in terms of connecting with the best and brightest and discussing the future of the Industry. Every day we encounter news coverage and blog postings that provide an inside look into how the space is evolving and the opportunities that exist to improve the way we all do business.

For example, David Marshall’s post on VMblog discussing IDC’s report on the migration to next generation platforms in Asia/Pacific and Japan. As Virtualization grows in popularity and adoption levels increase, priorities will change based on the size of the organization, technological needs, and geographic region to name just a few.

We’re all continuing to learn what’s important and why when adopting Virtualization technology. That’s why these events, conversations and the activity this month are so important… it’s not just about the TV and Magazine coverage.

VMworld 2007 has come and gone leaving us with many positive insights for the future of the industry. Michael Bilancieri, our Director of Products, attended the event and was rather impressed with the turnout as well as the growth in the “virtual eco system.”

As like last year, the business continuity, disaster recovery and high-availability protection-related sessions were well over sold and left many people unable to attend, indicating that this is one of the most prolific topics on the minds of customers.

The folks at VMware demo'd their R&D continuous availability project which was met with oohs and aahs from the audience clearly validating the need for solutions like this in the market. Continuous availability, or more specifically fault-tolerant availability in a virtual environment in Marathons’ case, is no small feat.

Interestingly enough Michael did have a conversation with an end-user industry veteran that stopped by our booth (seen below). He had been perusing the show and said that the everRun technology showcase was the most innovative thing that he’s seen in quite some time. He went on to say that in the availability/data protection space, innovation is typically incremental and is relegated to status quo paradigm views of the world.

Other insights come from our friends at XenSource who have done an incredible job enabling the ecosystem as evidenced by the number of software vendors supporting or soon to support XenSource. All in all we want to say kudos to VMware for building this market and opening up this event to all the virtualization players.

Next up: VMworld Europe in Cannes, France :)

The results are finally in and we are pleased to announce that Marathon has been chosen as the winner of the “Best of VMworld Award” in the New Technology Category. Tech Target’s SearchServerVirtualization.com selected from more than 100 exhibitors offering new products and innovations.

Below is the complete list of winners:

Category: New Technology
Winner: Onaro Inc. – VM Insight
Winner: Marathon Technologies Corp. – everRun FT for XenEnterprise
Winner: InovaWave Inc. – InovaWave VirtualOctane for ESX Server

Category: Capacity planning, consolidation software
Gold: CiRBA Inc. – CiRBA Data Center Intelligence 4.4
Finalist: 3Leaf Systems – V-8000 Virtual I/O Server

Category: Performance Monitoring and Optimization
Gold: Akorri – Akorri BalancePoint 1.7
Finalist: B-hive – B-hive Conductor
Finalist: Netuitive Inc. – Netuitive SI for VMware

Category: Migration Tools
Gold: PlateSpin Ltd. – PlateSpin PowerConvert 6.6
Finalist: Leostream Corp. – Leostream P>V 4.0

Category: Data Protection and Security
Gold: Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) – NetBackup 6.5
Finalist: Blue Lane Technologies Inc. – VirtualShield
Finalist: LeftHand Networks – Virtual SAN Appliance

Category: Utilities
Gold: Veeam Software – Veeam Reporter 2.0 VMware
Finalist: ThinPrint GmbH – .print Virtual Desktop Engine

Category: Desktop virtualization software
Gold: ClearCube Technology Inc. – Sentral 5.6
Finalist: VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) – VMware Workstation
Finalist: VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) – VMware ACE 2

Category: Green Computing
Winner: 3PAR Inc. – 3PAR Utility Storage
Winner: Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) – AMD’s quad-core processor technology

Category: Best of Show
Winner: IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) – IBM System x 3950 M2 with VMware ESX Server 3i