Powerful Solutions For Non-Transaction Based Apps

For non-transaction based apps, look at the increasingly sophisticated  third-party monitoring solutions available. See the table below. For example, Lyonesse Software's Double-Take, Steeleye's LifeKeeper, Symantec's Veritas Application Director, and Cassatt's Active Response can monitor both physical and virtual applications running on virtual servers, and notify IT staff when a host or application fails, so that a new virtual instance can be quickly brought online.

Vendors and Products

Virtualization and clustering are becoming more interrelated and complementary solutions for IT managers. While the two technologies grew out of different needs and have had different infrastructures, they are now merging and providing a powerful tool for managing more complex workloads in the data center. This is making both more appealing to smaller-sized businesses. "If you can afford the longer failover times for some of your applications, you can get a better level of resiliency and business continuity from virtualization," says Oestreich.