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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.

There are at least three straightforward steps that best practices companies are implementing to achieve aggressive costs savings with their server virtualization initiatives. I'll be reviewing these three steps in more detail, along with customer use cases, in a webinar on August 19th, "How to Get at least 2x Greater Cost Savings from Server Virtualization." To register for the webinar, go to: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/72241968

1. Expand Ratio of Virtual Machines to Physical Hosts - One of the simplest steps companies are taking to realize larger cost savings from server virtualization is increasing the ratio of virtual machines per physical host. The average ratio for companies who’ve adopted server virtualization is five virtual machines per one physical host. But the improved performance of the latest hypervisors and Intel processors can easily support 2X greater virtual to physical ratios.

2. Increase the Percentage of Applications Running in Virtual Environments - Another step best practice companies are using to increase their virtualization costs savings is to increase the percentage of their applications running in their virtual environments. According to Goldman Sachs research on IT spending and trends, 90 percent of respondents currently virtualize only 15 to 30 percent of their applications. Best practice companies, including one showcased in the webinar, are virtualizing 90% of their applications.

3. Decrease Virtual Storage Costs by Avoiding Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks – Early virtualization platforms required shared or networked storage to take advantage of the most compelling features of server virtualization including live migration, high availability, provisioning templates and other valuable features. However, newer virtualization platforms and high availability solutions no longer require expensive FC SANs.

The Burton Group recently completed a certification review of Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essential 5.5 Platinum Edition. After reviewing XenServer against extensive production-ready criteria (27 required features, 42 preferred features and 24 optional features—these guys are thorough!) the Burton Group team found that XenServer is enterprise-production ready.

Chris Wolf, virtualization expert and Senior Analyst at the Burton Group, said on his blog that “XenServer has demonstrated itself as a virtualization platform worthy of the demands of large scale enterprise environments.” He also found that XenServer meets the security, management, availability, storage, network, compute, scalability, and performance requirements typical of many enterprises.

You can read more about the Burton Group’s findings here, and they will also be presenting the complete criteria list at their Catalyst conference in a couple of weeks.

Congratulations to the Citrix XenServer team!
 

Bhumik Patel of Citrix has posted Part II of the Citrix and Marathon demo at SAP on his blog. Part I of Bhumik’s blog series looked at specific details on Citrix Delivery Center and the Disaster Recovery demonstration for SAP NetWeaver.

Part II covers different high availability solutions also demonstrated at SAP. In addition to this blog series, a Reference Architecture document provides all the technical details about Citrix and Marathon solutions implemented for SAP. When looking for an HA solution, various factors such as application criticality and business impact must be considered before choosing a particular solution for an application. A more detailed report on determining availability requirements can be found here.

The following video from Citrix features the Marathon everRun VM Level 3 High Availability solution demonstrated at SAP Co-Innovation Labs in Palo Alto.

Given Citrix XenApp’s increasing importance to many organizations, Marathon has put together a XenApp High Availability Tool Kit to provide you with the information you need to achieve your SLA commitments:

• Optimizing Citrix XenApp High Availability white paper explains how to use a new strategy for XenApp availability that enables you to protect all aspects of your XenApp environment with the right amount of resources.

• XenApp 5.0 High Availability Performance white paper to help you understand and characterize the performance implications for running Citrix XenApp 5.0 with everRun.

• XenApp 5.0 Deployment Blueprint which includes server recommendations, workload planning, shared storage, network best practices and other practical tips for your Citrix XenApp deployment with everRun.

Also, be sure to check out this video from Gabe Carrejo, a technology specialist at Citrix, which provides a demonstration of how to achieve high availability for Xen virtual servers with Marathon.
 

As many of you know, one of the key components of everRun VM is the ability to dial up or dial down the level of availability needed to protect business-critical applications. With buzz surrounding the release of Citrix’ XenServer 5, we have been approached with questions like “what should I use to protect my low-priority applications” and “how do I know when something should or shouldn’t be protected with the lockstep option?” To help explain the three levels of availability and when they would be used, we’ve put together these tips:

LEVEL 1: BASIC FAILOVER WITH XENSERVER HA
The first level of availability, basic failover and recovery, is appropriate for applications where recovery is not absolutely critical, and where manual intervention, while not desirable, is acceptable. These may include infrastructure applications or dev and test systems.
XenServer HA provides:

LEVEL 2: COMPONENT-LEVEL FAULT TOLERANCE WITH everRun VM
For applications with business-critical roles, everRun VM provides component-level fault tolerance: the ability to withstand the loss of an individual network or storage component without interruption or downtime.
The attributes of Level-2 availability include:

LEVEL 3: SYSTEM-LEVEL FAULT TOLERANCE WITH everRun VM AND LOCKSTEP OPTION
For the most mission-critical systems, Marathon everRun VM with Lockstep Option provides system-level fault tolerance, with continuous availability in the face of component or system-wide failures. Level 3 will be available in 2009 and offers protection for systems that cannot experience any downtime and must maintain transaction state at all costs. everRun VM with Lockstep Option offers all of the benefits of everRun VM (Level 2), together with:

For more information on the different levels of availability please visit here.

Following last week’s XenServer HA announcement, we’ve been approached with questions like “How exactly does XenServer HA work?” and “How does XenServer HA and everRun VM work together.” Rather than respond ourselves we thought it would be best to point to a few fellow bloggers who have already answered these questions.

First, here’s a good post written by Anil Madhavapeddy at Citrix discussing how the overall architecture of XenServer HA works. Second, Scott Lowe has put together a great summary of why Citrix and Marathon worked together to develop XenServer HA.

If you want more details, please leave us a comment.