With the move to Server Virtualization a common concern is availability. With a physical server hosting 10 or 20 virtual servers, there is a fear of putting too many eggs in one basket. In larger Enterprises this can be done by implementing a virtualization tool which offers the ability to have an HA version of itself or to use an application like Scalent Systems VOE Infrastructure Virtualization tool, as I wrote about in a earlier entry. 

What about the mid-market user who needs to virtualize but would like to come up with a strategy to maintain system redundancy? For the most part this required having a system standing by idle to take over and a bunch of last minute heroics to get everything up and running. There is a simpler and more reliable way to achieve a highly available virtual server environment. 

Marathon Technologies, a company that has been developing and delivering high availability software for over 15 years, has created a new product called everRun VM; a complete software solution which delivers a highly available virtual server environment. The system requires two physical servers and on those servers you install everRun VM, which includes a copy of XenServer Enterprise. The cost of the solution is only $4,500 per server, so for $9k plus two physical servers you can have a highly available virtual environment capable of replacing 10 to 20 of your current physical servers. Keep in mind that all the servers virtualized are now highly available and you have in essence virtualized and amortized the cost of high availability. 

The technology supports all Windows applications, no specific cluster version is needed. This is ideal in the mid-market because not only does it cut down on software costs, but many times the application that really needed HA are those that don't have a clustering counterpart. A great example is Microsoft Access or Filemaker. Many mid-market companies have critical applications running on these applications, the ability to have them in a "never go down state" is very compelling. 

Architecturally the solution does not require a SAN. Storage can be local to each server with a private 1GBE crossover connection between the two. Data is then synchronously written to both disks, making data loss almost an impossibility. The solution pays off in two ways; first you can broaden your use of virtualization across more applications and also broaden your use of HA across more applications. For a mid-tier organization it is possible to have the entire company's servers virtualized with HA. Imagine a mid-tier business that never goes down due to hardware failure and does so for less then $10,000 in software.