Citrix, the global leader in application delivery infrastructure and Marathon Technologies, a provider of fault-tolerant, high availability (HA) software for physical and virtual servers, have just announced that the XenServer HA capabilities in Citrix XenServerTM 5 virtualisation software were jointly developed by Citrix and Marathon.

The significance of this announcement is threefold:

1. Citrix XenServer Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers now get auto-restart high availability – built by availability experts - as a standard component.
2. Because the XenServer HA capabilities were developed jointly, Citrix XenServer and Marathon everRun® VM are fully integrated for fast installation and easy configuration and management of virtual machines at three levels: basic HA, component-level fault tolerance and system level fault tolerance (available Q1 2009).
3. The combination of Citrix XenServer 5 and everRun VM provides selectable availability and fault-tolerant protection for applications running in virtual machines.

Built-in High Availability

XenServer HA is one of the key enhancements of the new Citrix XenServer 5. Unlike other products that charge extra for base-level high availability, XenServer HA provides auto-restart high availability as standard functionality for Citrix XenServer 5 Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers. These customers can deploy base level availability across their enterprise. Citrix selected high availability partner Marathon Technologies due to Marathon's proven expertise in providing award-winning high availability software for Microsoft Windows applications in physical and virtual environments.

Fully Integrated for Easy Installation, Configuration and Management

The two companies’ joint development of XenServer HA creates a seamless integration of XenServer HA and everRun VM. The benefits of this tight integration for IT professionals include:

• Streamlined setup and installation – IT administrators can install additional levels of availability from everRun VM within minutes.
• Seamless integration between different levels of availability – When administrators add everRun VM, it will automatically identify XenServer HA and provide them with a choice of three availability levels.
• Simplified availability management – Configuration and management of all availability levels are easily done from the everRun Availability Center (EAC) web-based management interface to provide administrators with simplified availability management.

The Only Virtualisation Platform with Selectable Availability – From High Availability to Fault Tolerance

When coupled with everRun VM, Citrix XenServer 5 is the only virtualisation platform that lets IT professionals select the right level of availability for each application. XenServer 5 customers who add everRun VM will be able to select three levels of availability:

1. XenServer HA: Level One: Failover High Availability standard with XenServer 5 Enterprise and Platinum Editions for failure detection and auto-restart and failover capabilities for applications that cannot endure extended periods of downtime.
2. everRun VM: Level Two: Component Level Fault Tolerance for business critical applications with a requirement for little or no downtime (such as ERP and CRM).
3. everRun VM Lockstep Option: Level Three: System Level Fault Tolerance (available Q1 2009) for the most critical applications with a requirement for zero downtime and zero data loss.

Both the everRun VM availability upgrade for Citrix XenServer 5 customers and the everRun VM bundle (XenServer 5 Enterprise Edition and everRun VM with level 1 and 2 availability) will be available 30 October 2008.

EACS is a Citrix Gold Solution Advisor and a Marathon Elite Partner. For further information and advice please call 0800 8047 256 or click here to contact us.