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Symantec Helps Companies Deploy, Monitor And Manage Virtualized Applications With ApplicationHA

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Symantec has announced the latest version of ApplicationHA, its high availability solution for VMware virtual environments that provides customers the ability to confidently virtualize their business critical applications.

The latest version of Symantec ApplicationHA extends the existing capabilities for disaster recovery with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager integration and provides a dashboard to monitor and manage hundreds of applications within VMware vCenter Server.

Symantec ApplicationHA, based on the industry-leading Veritas Cluster Server technology, provides high availability for business-critical applications through application-level visibility, control, and recovery in VMware environments. ApplicationHA runs inside a VMware guest operating system and fully integrates with VMware High Availability. In the event of an application failure, ApplicationHA coordinates recovery and restarts the application and/or virtual machine.

With this release, Symantec provides an application-aware Disaster Recovery solution through integration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. In the event that VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager fails over the virtual machine from the primary site to the disaster recovery site, Symantec ApplicationHA continues to monitor the health of the applications after recovery and re-establishes communication with VMware High Availability.

Additionally, ApplicationHA ensures that the application components come online in the right sequence during testing and actual disaster recovery scenarios. Finally, application status is recorded in the compliance report during SRM’s test or actual disaster recovery.

ApplicationHA now features new reporting and management functionality that allows IT professionals to centrally monitor hundreds of applications within virtual machines from a single dashboard.

By centrally managing and monitoring all applications within virtual environments, organizations can have better visibility into the health and needs of such applications. ApplicationHA now provides a summary list of virtual machines, an inventory of applications inside them and the status of each application.

ApplicationHA is now also easier to install. Installation previously required leveraging the product installer. ApplicationHA now enables a push install directly from the VMware vSphere client. This allows the user to simply install the VMware vCenter Server plugin and do everything else — from install, configuration, and on-going management of ApplicationHA directly from the VMware vSphere client.

These enhancements enable the installation experience to be similar between Linux and Windows guest OSs.

Symantec ApplicationHA 5.1 SP2 has a list price of $350 USD per virtual machine.

Symantec ApplicationHA supports major platforms including Windows, RedHat Enterprise Linux, and SuSE Linux Enterprise.

New Challenges Emerge As Virtualization Goes Mainstream, Symantec Finds

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Symantec recently announced the findings of its 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey which examined how organizations plan to move business-critical initiatives to virtual and hybrid cloud computing environments.

The survey highlighted topics including server, client, and storage virtualization, storage-as-a-service, and hybrid/private cloud technologies; and the results uncover disparities between expectations and reality as enterprises deploy these solutions. The survey is based on more than 3,700 respondents from 35 countries worldwide.

Adoption of server virtualization is widespread, and more than 75 percent of organizations are discussing private and hybrid cloud deployments. Of the technologies evaluated in the survey, server and storage virtualization are the most mature with 45 and 43 percent of enterprises implementing. Private Storage-as-a-Service is the least mature with 36 percent adopting.

Early investments have revealed gaps between expectations and reality which indicate that organizations are still learning what these technologies are capable of and how to overcome the new challenges they bring with them.

Server virtualization projects were most successful, with only a 4 percent average gap between expected and realized goals. The biggest gaps occurred in scalability, reducing capital expenditures and reducing operating expenditures.

The average shortfall in storage virtualization was 33 percent, with disappointments coming in agility, scalability and reducing operating expenditures.

Respondents reported an average gap between expected and realized goals of 26 percent with endpoint/desktop virtualization. They cited disappointments in new endpoint deployment, application delivery and application compatibility.

Seventy-seven percent of organizations are considering private Storage-as-a-Service, but these projects are challenging to implement and fall short of expectations by 37 percent. For example, complexity reduction was a goal for 84 percent of respondents, but reached by only 44 percent.

The survey shows that organizations are leveraging virtualization for business-critical applications. Of enterprises who are implementing virtualization, more than half (59 percent) plan to virtualize database applications in the next 12 months.

Fifty-five percent plan to virtualize web applications, and 47 percent plan to virtualize email and calendar applications. Forty-one percent plan to virtualize ERP applications.

More than half of respondents (56 percent) said storage costs somewhat or significantly increased with server virtualization. Of those in the process of virtualizing storage, the top three reasons for deployment include reducing operating expenses (55 percent), improving storage performance (54 percent), and improving disaster recovery readiness (53 percent).

Seventy-six percent of enterprises who have implemented server virtualization indicated that security was a somewhat/extremely large factor in keeping various constituents from being more confident about placing business-critical applications on virtualized servers. Sixty-three percent listed security as a significant/extreme challenge to implementing server virtualization.

David Marshall’s Sneak Peek at Symantec VIBES

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Symantec‘s R&D engineers are working on a new virtual machine technology that is focused on protecting users from online attacks while surfing the Web.  It works under the concept of setting up multiple virtual machines on a user’s physical machine.  And then, it enables a user to perform operations of different security levels and different scenario based transactions in each of the different virtual machines.  The so-called VIBES prototype puts a new spin on things to significantly improve browser security.

David Marshall got a sneak peek of VIBES at Symantec’s R&D labs, and you can read the rest of his report here.

3PAR and Symantec Announce Joint Development Project

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3PAR, global provider of utility storage, is readying an announcement about a development project with Symantec to integrate 3PAR thin provisioning technology with Veritas Storage Foundation to allow granular, automated, non- disruptive space reclamation within the 3PAR storage array. 3PAR and Symantec have teamed together to bring to market an industry first—the automated use of filesystem-level intelligence to continually optimize storage utilization and deliver infrastructure automation.

The joint project between 3PAR and Symantec fosters development aimed at giving Storage Foundation the ability to track the mapping of block-level capacity to thin provisioned volumes on 3PAR InServ Storage Servers. This capability is intended to allow the Veritas File System within Storage Foundation to periodically communicate the location of free blocks to the 3PAR array as file deletions and changes happen within the filesystem. This partnership will enable 3PAR arrays to use this granular filesystem-level information to autonomically reclaim unused space within thinly provisioned virtual volumes, thus maintaining high capacity utilization without impacting host applications.

With this joint effort, 3PAR and Symantec have become the first vendors to announce the development of a granular, intelligent, and automated mechanism for reclaiming unused storage capacity based on the sharing of intelligence gathered at the filesystem level.

3PAR

Symantec Unveils Veritas Cluster Server One (VCS One)

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Symantec today introduced Veritas Cluster Server One (VCS One), a new high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) platform for next-generation data centers. VCS One moves beyond traditional clustering, enabling IT managers to implement advanced services including active/active DR, multi-tier business application HA and scale-out control — increasing uptime and decreasing capital (CAPEX) and operational costs (OPEX) for the business.

Traditional clustering solutions can be complex to deploy and manage for individual databases and applications. Yet next-generation data centers, with their need for virtualized, scalable and distributed environments, strain these traditional solutions past the breaking point. Next-generation data centers are leveraging server virtualization to create thousands of servers, demanding a massive increase in scalability. In addition, traditional clustering solutions complicate or even prevent the use of valuable virtualization features like live migration. Finally, maintaining only the availability of traditional back-end services such as databases is not enough. Instead, organizations require the availability of end-to-end business applications built on highly distributed, multi-tier application architectures.

Veritas Cluster Server One delivers a new, unique HA/DR architecture that not only directly addresses these issues, but also dramatically simplifies the deployment and ongoing management of HA/DR services. The VCS One architecture is client-server based and highly scalable, initially supporting up to 256 nodes per cluster. It is non-intrusive and outside the operating system kernel — facilitating deployment and upgrades. VCS One also has a simpler networking model and built-in resiliency against configuration changes that impact availability. VCS One is policy-driven, with priorities, scheduling and dependency management to automate tasks and increase operator efficiency. Finally, Veritas Cluster Server One has server virtualization abstraction and control to deliver a common HA/DR operating model across the various virtual platforms in an enterprise data center.

Veritas Cluster Server One provides high availability and disaster recovery for the next-generation data center with: One platform for virtual and physical environments; One platform for multi-tier and monolithic applications; and One platform for scale-out and scale-up control.

Veritas Cluster Server One is now generally available with estimated pricing starting at $995 per CPU.

Symantec Acquires nSuite Technologies, Moves Into Endpoint Virtualization Management

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NetworkWorld is reporting that Symantec has agreed to acquire nSuite Technologies, a small firm specializing in virtualization solutions for the healthcare industry, for an undisclosed amount in cash. Symantec aims to build out its portfolio of virtualization security and management technologies.

nSuite makes software called PrivacyShell Virtual Workspace Management, which is primarily used by hospitals for secure desktop management on behalf of physicians and medical staff. The nSuite software works to create a container around an individual’s authorized applications and data. When a user is authenticated, the user’s applications and data can quickly be ported to the Windows-based desktop where the individual is working, and later removed. PrivacyShell Virtual Workspace Management balances centralized control with the flexibility needed to provide tailored user environments. It leverages virtualization and authentication technologies to optimize the way hospitals deliver and manage end user workspaces.

After the nSuite acquisition is completed, which is expected this month, Symantec anticipates integrating the nSuite software with its Altiris SVS and AppStream management consoles in the future. It will announce product updates at ManageFusion, a hands-on lab and training event held in various cities worldwide.

nSuite Technologies