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
| Vendor | Product | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Cassatt.com | Active Response | Monitor, pool, and allocate physical and VM resources |
| Citrix.com | VMlogix | Automated provisioning |
| Lyonesse Software (lyonware.co.uk) | Double-Take | Real-time data replication and failover |
| Microsoft.com | Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V | Virtualization for 64-bit servers |
| Novell.com | Cloud Manager | Automated, template-based provisioning |
| Forge | Hardware appliance for one-click failovers | |
| Steeleye.com | LifeKeeper | Data protection, disaster recovery and high availability for Windows, Linux, and VMware |
| Symantec.com | Volume Replicator | Volume replication over IP networks |
| Veritas Application Director | Monitor physical and VM workloads | |
| Virsto.com | Virsto One | Virtual storage management |
| VMware.com | vCloud Director | Lightweight app server and load balancing |
| vFabrik | Virtual datacenter creation | |
| VM6Software.com | VMex | High-available clustering for Hyper-V |
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.