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Citrix and Marathon Partner to Bring World Class High Availability and Fault Tolerance to Citrix XenServer
Wednesday 17. September 2008 - New Citrix XenServer 5 Includes Built-In High Availability "Powered by Marathon"
Citrix Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure and Marathon Technologies, the only provider of fault-tolerant, high availability (HA) software for physical and virtual servers, today announced that the XenServer HA capabilities highlighted in todays Citrix XenServer 5 virtualization software announcement were jointly developed by Citrix and Marathon. The significance of this announcement for the industry is threefold:
Citrix XenServer Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers now get auto-restart high availability – built by availability experts – as a standard component.
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).
The combination of Citrix XenServer 5 and everRun VM is the only solution available on the market that provides selectable availability and fault-tolerant protection for applications running in virtual machines.
Built-in High Availability from the Availability Experts
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 Marathons proven expertise in providing award-winning high availability software for Microsoft Windows applications in physical and virtual environments.
“We wanted to give our customers the best high availability technology in the industry, and our open architecture and commitment to a strong ecosystem of partners allowed us to do just that,” said Lou Shipley, vice president and general manager, Xen Products Group, Citrix Systems. “Teaming with Marathon enabled us to provide enterprises with a range of availability solutions for the Citrix XenServer platform delivering the best performance, protection and value.”
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 availabilty levels are easily done from the everRun Availability Center (EAC) web-based management interface to provide administrators with simplified availability management.
The Only Virtualization Platform with Selectable Availability – From High Availability to Fault Tolerance
When coupled with everRun VM, Citrix XenServer 5 is the only virtualization 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:
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.
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).
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.
“Our partnership with Marathon allows us to extend the built-in per-VM high availability capability in XenServer to offer a fully tailored level of availability per virtual machine – from basic high availability through to five nines fault tolerance,” said Simon Crosby, CTO Virtualization and Management division, Citrix Systems. “everRun VM is a game-changing availability offering, and makes XenServer the industrys most powerful infrastructure availability platform.”
“Citrix and Marathon are both focused on eliminating complexity for IT professionals who are trying to do more with less by offering software that is completely automated and delivers the best price performance, said Gary Phillips, president and CEO of Marathon Technologies. “XenServer 5 with everRun VM lets IT administrators select the best level of availability for optimized price, performance and protection. The combination is still the only way for companies to get fault tolerant protection for their most valued applications running in virtual machines.”
Pricing and Availability
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 October 30, 2008. For North America, suggested retail pricing is per server:
Marathon everRun VM – $2000
Marathon everRun VM with Citrix XenServer 5 Enterprise Edition – $4500