Blog Entries in Windows

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 - 11:36 am EDT

Top 5 Low-Cost Tips for Preventing Exchange Downtime

Posted by: Michelle Liro

Thanks again to everyone who joined us for last week’s webinar “Top 5 Low Cost Tips for Preventing Exchange Downtime” where Marathon’s availability experts reviewed their key tips for the prevention of downtime, including:


1. Reduce human error with process
2. Document your infrastructure
3. Remove single points of failure
4. Don’t forget to test
5. Understand your requirements


There’s a lot of great information in this 40-minute webinar, so be sure to check it out. We’ve summarized the Q&A portion for the webinar below.
 

Q: What type of storage does everRun support?
everRun supports any type of storage that you have. The most common storage configuration we see is local disk drives for the servers themselves. That would have the same amount of data protection as even a SAN would, and in some cases would be even better protection, because you have total redundancy from both servers and everRun is protecting that as if it’s a single storage device. You could also have iSCSI connected storage, or any kind of SAN storage that you wanted to have. Again, everRun supports any type of storage.

Q: Which versions of Exchange do you support?
The beauty of the everRun architecture is that is can support pretty much any Windows-based application. Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 – everRun supports them all. Some other high availability solutions require specialized scripting to support applications, but everRun does not require this. Also, with solutions like clusters, sometimes you have to buy the higher-end more expensive “enterprise” versions of the application software to support that configuration, but with everRun, we can provide complete protection for the standard versions of Windows and Exchange Server or any other application.

Q: What is the load on the systems when using everRun?
The good news here is that there is very little overhead associated with everRun – about 5% to make things run redundantly. That’s a very small performance price to pay to get such a high level of protection for Exchange.

Q: How does everRun handle the mirroring of data that’s loaded in memory?
There are a couple of ways that is done. Since the application is actually running both severs simultaneously, that means the memory is being replicated on both servers simultaneously as well. Keep in mind that as the applications execute, they are storing to storage, and because of the redundancy built into the everRun solution, that data is being written from memory down under the storage element redundantly as well.

Q: Is it possible to run servers in two different locations?
Absolutely. In the slide where I showed the everRun architecture with the two servers, you can take those two servers and separate them geographically. They could be in different rooms in the same building, different buildings on the same campus, or even separated further, by about 100 miles, depending on the bandwidth and latency of your connection. We call this our SplitSite configuration.

Q: How is this different from a cluster solution?
The major difference of everRun vs. a cluster solution is that we are doing operations on two servers simultaneously. The application is actually running in tandem on both of these servers. With a cluster solution, you’re running your application on one server, while the other server stands by and waits for a failure to occur. That means that with a cluster solution, when the first server fails, the cluster then has to do something to start up the application on the second server and then continue from that point. But that means downtime, data loss, and loss of connectivity. With everRun, that doesn’t happen. Because the other server is already doing the same thing, there is no downtime and no data loss, because there is no “recovery” – even when there is a failure.

Q: So are both servers “hot” in an everRun configuration?
Yes – that’s exactly right. Both servers are active and run simultaneously, unlike a cluster. So with everRun, you could have a failure of a component on one server and then another type of failure on the second server and still be operational. With a cluster, this scenario is not possible. If you have failures on both systems at the same time with a cluster, then you are down.

Q: Does everRun require dedicated servers just for Exchange?
No – everRun protected servers do not need to be dedicated to one specific application. You can run multiple applications on this pair of servers, and even chose which ones you do or don’t want to protect with everRun. This is good for small businesses, who want or need to consolidate several applications on to fewer servers.

For more information about protecting Exchange from downtime, be sure to check out our white paper "Six Secrets to 24x7 Exchange Availability."
 

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Webinar  Downtime  Exchange  Fault Tolerance  Interview  Webcast  Windows 

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Thursday, December 10th, 2009 - 9:35 am EST

Top 5 High Availability Topics of 2009

Posted by: Michelle Liro

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.

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High Availability  Citrix  Exchange  Fault Tolerance  Marathon  Windows 

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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 - 11:40 am EDT

Need for "Always-On" Availability is Growing

Posted by: Michelle Liro

As companies become 24x7 “always on” operating environments, they are becoming more and more sensitive to application and system downtime. We recently conducted two surveys to take a look at this trend, specifically for Windows Server applications and environments.

Given the 24x7 nature of business today, we weren’t surprised to find that about half of the IT professionals who responded to the survey reported that 50% or more of their Windows Server applications now require “always on” availability. Whether it’s for email and collaboration tools, manufacturing systems, customer operations, financial transactions, or healthcare records, businesses today are becoming more and more dependent on their Windows-based applications.

More than 20% of survey participants reported that 76 -100% of their Windows Server applications require “always on” availability. An additional 28% of respondents stated that 51 - 75% of their Windows Server applications require “always on” availability or continuous uptime.

The surveys also found that that the number of Windows Server applications that require high availability has increased significantly in the past two years. 76% of the respondents reported that downtime to Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange Server caused the most disruption and were the most important applications that required high availability protection. The surveys also revealed that approximately 60% of participants have either already upgraded to Windows Server 2008 or plan to within the next year.

Thanks again to all who participated in these surveys. For more information and results, see our press release.
 

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Availability  High Availability  Microsoft  Windows 

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Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 - 9:27 am EDT

September Survey Winner

Posted by: Brian Mullins

Congratulations to Richard Potter of Boeing, the winner of a $50 American Express gift card for participating in our September survey on Windows application high availability. 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.)

 

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Announcements  Availability  High Availability  Windows 

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Monday, September 21st, 2009 - 9:40 am EDT

Q&A: Windows Server High Availability

Posted by: Michael Bilancieri

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.

 

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Availability  Continuous Availability  Data Replication  Disaster Recovery  EverRun  Fault Tolerance  High Availability  Marathon  Webcast  Webinar  Windows 

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