November 17th, 2009

SteelEye DataKeeper for Windows Server 2008 R2

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Clustering software, HA/Failover, Linux, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Disaster Recovery, DataKeeper Cluster Edition, SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Windows, Servers, Operating Systems, Software

I’ve watched SteelEye for quite a number of years as they changed from a clustering/high availability software (LifeKeeper) supplier focused solely on UNIX to a supplier of a number of technologies for Windows, Linux and virtual environments.  Recently the company added DataKeeper for Windows Server 2008 R2 to their portfolio. It is clear that availability and reliability needs to be a focus for business critical applications.

Here’s how SteelEye describes DataKeeper for Windows Server 2008 R2

DataKeeper, a highly optimized data replication solution for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, is available in two versions. The first delivers data replication services as an extension to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, while a second version of DataKeeper Cluster Edition further extends the capabilities of Microsoft Cluster Services and Windows Server Failover Clustering. Both editions support real-time replication of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines between physical servers across either LAN or WAN connections.

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November 2nd, 2009

Oracle's Virtualization Story

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Application virtualization, Clustering software, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Security in virtualized environments, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Oracle Corp., Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Storage Management, Server Virtualization, Utility Computing, Tools & Techniques, Hardware, Storage, Servers

Oracle has been part of the virtualization software market for quite some time. I’ve been following their efforts since they developed technology to support Digital Equipment Corporation’s VAXcluster technology. Their Real Application Cluster (RAC) has been a good example of processing virtualization and their Oracle Cluster File System is an example of storage virtualization. Oracle’s Adam Hawley, Direct of Product Management for Oracle VM, brought me up to date on Oracle’s efforts in the areas of virtual machine software (Oracle VM), their implementation of the XEN virtual machine software project. My quick take is that Oracle’s offerings in the area of virtualization technology will be well received by Oracle’s installed base.

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April 29th, 2009

Stratus Avance 1.5 - A Simple, but Powerful, Way to HA/DR for SMB

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtualization

Tags: Stratus Technologies, Small And Medium Business, Avance, Avance Software, Virtualization, Storage Management, Cloud Computing, Utility Computing, Marketing Research, Hardware

There, I got three acronyms into the title of a post!  That was just about as much fun as getting the Wall Street Journal to unknowingly publish a pun as part of a quote! Now that I’ve said that, let’s get down to business.

Lee Kaminski, a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Stratus Technologies,  brought me up to date on Avance 1.5, Stratus’ High Availability/Disaster Recovery/Disaster Prevention product that target’s small to medium businesses. Lee and I have a lot in common and so it was fun chatting. I discovered that Lee’s office is in an old DEC building that I often visited during my time as a DECie.

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April 22nd, 2009

VMware Launches vSphere

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Marketing, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Data Center, VMware Inc., vSphere, VMware vSphere 4, VMware Data Recovery, VMware vShield Zones, Data Centers, Mainframes, Storage, Strategy

VMware’s vSphere was the topic of conversation when I spoke with Bogomil Balkansky Vice President of Product Marketing for VMware a short while ago. It appears that the VMware mantra for this product is “IT as a Service: Efficiency, Control, Choice.” VMware is doing its best to compare what they are now offering to the telephone system.

This comparison, however, has been made often for topics such as “software as a service,” “utility computing” and a few other industry catch phrases. What’s not clear is if the market will believe VMware any more than when suppliers such as HP, IBM and others said similar things nearly a decade ago.

What is clear is that VMware wants everyone to believe that they’ve cut through years of industry buzzwords and catch phrases and are now offering, with the help of their partners, the perfect set of tools for organizations to create their own in-house clouds and then to use cloud resources offered by outside suppliers as the situation requires. They’re even going so far as to call this “the new mainframe.”

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April 8th, 2009

Veritas CommandCentral Disaster Recovery Advisor

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 4:00 am

Categories: Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Virtual storage

Tags: Symantec Corp., Data Center, Knowledgebase, VERITAS Software Corp., Advisor, Tool, Disaster Recovery Advisor, Data Centers, Disaster Recovery, Storage

Symantec, a long time player in the virtualiation technology market, has just launched the Veritas CommandCentral Disaster Recovery Advisor. It is designed to help organizations evaluate their disaster recovery plans by scanning the organization’s IT infrastructure and comparing what it sees to a very large knowledgebase of potential problems.

The knowledge base includes potential issues with:

• Operating systems: Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux (Red Hat and SUSE) and Windows
• Databases: Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and IBM DB2
• Clustering managers: Veritas Cluster Server, IBM HACMP, Microsoft Cluster Server and SunClusters
• Storage virtualization:
  • Storage arrays from EMC, NetApp and Hitachi
  • Replication from EMC, NetApp and Hitachi
  • Volume management that is part of the supported operating systems as well as both Veritas and IBM’s volume managers

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March 16th, 2009

Emerald Queen uses Neverfail for Exchange

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Clustering software, Consumer use of Virtualization, HA/Failover, Virtual machine software, Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft Exchange Server, High Availability, Entertainment, Neverfail, Emerald Queen Hotel & Casinos, E-mail, Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Online Communications, Hardware

I always enjoy learning more about how organizations are using virtualization technology to enhance their operations. Along those lines, I recently had the opportunity to communicate with Matt Kopf, Systems Administrator, Emerald Queen, to learn how his organization is using clustering/high availability software from Neverfail. Here are his comments.

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January 21st, 2009

Gemstone Gemfire Enterprise

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Application virtualization, Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Clustering software, Virtualization

Tags: Gemfire, Data, GemStone, Data Fabric, Data Management, Storage, Databases, Hardware, Enterprise Software, Software

I had the opportunity to speak with Gemstone Systems‘ Richard Lamb, President, and Raj Kulkarni, COO, about Gemfire Enterprise. This product appears to take lessons from the grid computing world to expand levels of performance and scalability dramatically. They appeared to deal pretty well with my bad puns and I learned a great deal.

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January 15th, 2009

When is virtual machine technology the wrong choice?

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 2:38 am

Categories: Access virtualization, Application virtualization, Clustering software, HA/Failover, High performance computing, Managing virtualized environments, Operating system virtualization/partitioning, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtualization

Tags: Application Virtualization, Virtual Machine, Virtual Machine Technology, Desktop Virtualization, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Utility Computing, Storage Management, Hardware, Storage

I was enjoying a conversation with the good folks at Appistry about where and how their application virtualization technology could best be used. I heard similar stories when speaking with the folks at Trigence. I was impressed by some of ways their customers are making use of that technology.

During the conversation it again become clear at each of the various types of virtualization technology referenced in the Kusnetzky Group model of virtualization (see Sorting out the different layers of virtualization) has its unique place in the pantheon of information technology. Although virtual machine technology is just the ticket when system (client or server) optimization and consolidation are the goals, it simply isn’t the correct choice when other requirements are at the forefront.

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January 7th, 2009

Backing up virtual machine data

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Virtual machine software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Storage, Virtual Machine, Desktop Virtualization, Dan Kusnetzky

Several suppliers of backup and/or disaster recovery software for virtual server environments have spoken with me. It seems that, like in any other are of computing, there are different approaches to backing up (and recovering) applications and data within a virtual machine and to deal with needs for disaster recovery. Here’s a quick list of the approaches that seem popular.

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January 2nd, 2009

Levels of availability and disaster recovery

Posted by Dan Kusnetzky @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing/SAAS/ISP Issues, Clustering software, HA/Failover, Managing virtualized environments, Network Virtualization, Virtual machine software, Virtual processing software, Virtual storage, Virtualization

Tags: Availability, Data Centers, Productivity, Disaster Recovery, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Dan Kusnetzky

I visited a Kusnetzky Group client, Racemi, several weeks ago. We had a fantastic discussion of disaster recovery and all of the different approaches organizations may choose to deploy to achieve the level of availability needed for their workloads. Racemi, for those who don’t know the company, offers the DynaCenter family of products that are targeting cost-effective automated rapid server recovery - even on dissimilar hardware.

How much is enough - levels of availability

Availability is a good thing, after all, automated work only gets accomplished if the IT infrastructure is working and available. (as my Grandson would way, “Well Duh.”) Read the rest of this entry »