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Blog

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.

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

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.

We recently teamed up with Citrix to demonstrate an end-to-end Citrix and Marathon combined solution onsite at one of the world's largest business software companies, SAP. Bhumik Patel of Citrix was one of the team members on the project.

A quick overview of the project is available here.

First they virtualized every Citrix Delivery Center component and the backend SAP NetWeaver application servers using Citrix XenServer. Then they showcased what a remote SAP NetWeaver user would experience accessing the SAP NetWeaver Portal via Citrix Delivery Center while focusing on the high availability/fault tolerant solutions Citrix and Marathon provide. Finally, they simulated a complete failure in the primary site and used the combined NetScaler Global Server Load Balancing feature in conjunction with Marathon's everRun DR product to failover SAP to a secondary data center.

Each piece of the demo is broken down into small video segments in Bhumik’s blog. Part One is available now. Stay tuned to Bhumik’s blog for a detailed reference architecture and additional videos on different high availability scenarios including everRun VM, also demonstrated at SAP Co-Innovation Lab. 

We had a great time at the Citrix Synergy show in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Citrix put together a well-organized show that facilitated some good discussions with our partners and customers. Overall the show was a great success for us.

We also had some fun at the show going on camera with “Citrix TV” to talk about how our everRun products protect XenServer applications and virtual machines as well as provide fault tolerance for XenApp. You can watch the interviews with Jerry Melnick, Tom Reed and me below.

Jerry Melnick - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/503

Tom Reed - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/502

Michael Bilancieri - http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/498

We had some great questions during the Q & A session of our March webinar with Peter Blum and Sridhar Mullapudi, both of Citrix Systems. We’ve posted the questions and responses here on our blog for everyone’s benefit. This webinar was recorded in case you weren't able to attend, click here to view the webcast!

Q: How big of data pipe is needed for Level 2 (between sites)?
A: The data pipe needed for Level-2 across two sites is an OC3 or higher with 10ms round trip latency.

Q: Can Marathon be used to provide Active - Active access to database applications in geographic disperse locations?
A: Yes, we can with our Level-3 protection and split site option, however the users will only connect to one server at a time.

Q: When is Server 2008 going to be supported?
A: 2008 support will be available on April 30th.

Q: Can you speak to some of the requirements, network speed, latency, etc. necessary to utilize the everRun DR solution?
A: everRun DR can run on any network pipe that can accommodate the amount of change data we will be replicating. Because this is an asynchronous product with compression as well as a bandwidth modeler, we can perform a bandwidth assessment in your environment to tell you what your RPO would be with your current network pipe. Click here to contact us for an assessment

Q: Does everRun provide any corruption detection or warning messages?
A: Since everRun is application agnostic we cannot detect corrupt application data at this time.

Q: When will Marathon’s product work with Dell OEM Citrix XenServer?
A: It is currently being researched and is not assigned for release yet.

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.

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.

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.

Yesterday, Matt Fairbanks, VP Product Marketing, Citrix, and Jerry Melnick, CTO, Marathon, presented the webinar “Virtualizing Exchange – The Cold, Hard Numbers on Why Citrix XenServer + everRun VM is the Best Platform.” Below are a few of the questions asked from participants with Jerry’s response to each:

Q: What happens in a case of a split brain scenario?

Jerry: In our SplitSite products, we have what we call a quorum services capability – it’s actually an additional component that’s added on to manage split brain and arbitrate when you lose all connections between the two machines.

Q: How long does it generally take to set up XenServer with everRun VM to create this kind of a solution?

Jerry: Citrix people have always mentioned “Ten minutes to Xen” which is a pretty good rule of thumb. We say it’s another ten minutes to add the Marathon software. It’s a simple script that gets run on each host, and then you’re off and ready to protect the machines. The actual protection process itself is really a matter of a minute. The simplicity and ease have never been seen before in this industry with this class of availability solution.

Q: In field of limitations and customers that have deployed this kind of technology, are there any things you would council people to consider to set up XenServer and everRun in the most highly available and robust way?

Jerry: With our system, we provide best practice guidelines for configuring networks availability, etc. One of the beauties of our technology – working in conjunction with XenServer – is that once everything is installed and running, we put everything into an active validation mode so that we know components are configured properly. If something is misconfigured or isn’t running redundantly, you’re going to see the status and receive a warning. A key benefit of this system is you will know how to fix it before there are any problems.

There are many cases in availability systems where you have simple failover technologies: you take an error, you failover, you get to that resource, and then you find out the network or disk isn’t working because it wasn’t configured properly. By having this active validation capability and the report out, the status is being monitored in a simple and reliable fashion – you know when you’re redundant and how you’re going to manage failures.

Thanks to everyone that attended. For those that didn’t have the chance to attend or ask questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and we will do our best to answer them.

For those of you that may have forgot to put it on your calendars, Marathon and Citrix are holding a webinar today to showcase the benefits of virtualizing Microsoft Exchange servers. Event attendees will learn:

The webinar will begin promptly at 11:30 a.m. EDT, so if you haven’t yet registered you can do so here.

For those that can’t attend, we will be posting the Q&A following the event.

• New Disaster Recovery Options Emerge - Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) News Analysis - Byte and Switch
  The best disaster recovery advice: Avoid disasters. Since that's not always possible, the next best advice is to choose the most cost-effective disaster recovery options -- ones that will work when needed.
  (tags: disaster_recovery business_continuity virtualization backup)
• Opinion: What Gartner didn't say about client virtualization
  Gartner's prediction that 'only' 40% will adopt client-side virtualization is actually a lot.
  (tags: virtualization Garntner)

For most organizations, email is single-handedly the most important tool for accomplishing business objectives. Without access to email, companies are at an immediate disadvantage in today’s “I want it now” marketplace. For example, let’s look at the impact email downtime has on productivity: Assuming that your employees are 25% less productive when email is unavailable, and their annual salary is $60,000, then every hour of downtime for an organization of 500 people results in more than $7,200 in lost employee productivity. Can your organization bare a $7,200/hour loss? In today’s economy? Probably Definitely not.

Avoiding the aforementioned consequence is an option, but in order to do so you need to guarantee continuous availability for your organizations email server. According to Paul Rubens at ServerWatch, 2007 forecasts from Gartner revealed that Microsoft Exchange 2007 will own 70% of the email market share by 2010. Now, whether Microsoft will actually return those results, it’s still too early to tell. However, as more and more companies rely on Exchange servers to run business functions, all potential causes of unplanned downtime need to be identified and eliminated.

Over the next month, we will be providing you with some recommendations on how to improve Exchange high availability through planned and unplanned downtime – starting with a webinar on November 11 titled “Virtualizing Exchange – The Cold, Hard Numbers on Why Citrix XenServer and everRun VM is the Best Platform.” For this webinar, Jerry Melnick, Marathon CTO, and Matt Fairbanks, VP of Product Marketing for Citrix Virtualization and Management Division, will team up to discuss how the latest server virtualization technologies keep users continuously connected to Microsoft Exchange servers in the easiest and most effective manner. We encourage you to register online for the webinar if you haven’t already.

Is there anything in particular related to protecting your Exchange severs you would like us to address in the next few weeks? Leave us a comment below and we will be sure to put it on our radar.

• VMworld 2008: Top 10 Products
  top 10 products from VMworld 2008
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds: VMworld 2008 Vegas: Chris Neal, BlueStripe CEO interviewed
  CEO of BlueStripe Software interviewed at VMworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• Live from VMworld 2008: Day 2 – VMware Keynote | virtualization.info
  highlights and things to expect from Day 2 of Vmworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• VMTalk.com » Post Topic » Verizon Business to offer new virtualization services
  Verizon to offer virtualization services - announced at VMworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• VMworld 2008 - VMware CTO Dr. Stephen herrod Keynote liveblog
  liveblogging from VMware CTO's keynote speech at VMworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• VMware demo reveals ESX 4.0 features | Business Tech - CNET News
  demo at VMworld details features of ESX 4.0
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• DataCore Showcases New Storage Virtualization Developments at VMworld 2008 : VMblog.com - Virtualization Technology News and Information for Everyone
  details of DataCore's new offerings at VMworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• VMware's Maritz shoots back at Microsoft
  Torode reports how VMware's CEO is reponding to Microsoft and Microsoft's presence at VMworld
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• VMworld 2008: Day 1 Keynote | Tech Trends
  Recap of VMware CEO's day 1 of VMworld keynote speech
  (tags: vmworld2008)
• Live from VMworld 2008: Day 1 – Cisco Keynote | virtualization.info
  Details of Cisco keynote
  (tags: vmworld2008)

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.