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VMware will ‘Virtually' Change Fault Tolerance Landscape
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An in-depth talk and demo of VMware's upcoming Fault Tolerance (FT) feature during VMworld has stirred the pot for many software vendors in the contingency space. Double-Take, everRun, Neverfail, XOsoft, and others, are not worried about direct competition from VMware right away, but the writing is on the wall. In fact, everRun is already poisoning the well for VMware FT, a product that hasn't even been released (see Marathon blog entry).
What is VMware Fault Tolerance?
VMware Fault Tolerance will be introduced as a new feature in the virtual datacenter operating system that provides zero-downtime and zero data loss from hardware failure of a host. VMware FT leverages VMotion technology to create a secondary virtual machine running on a separate host. The hosts are then kept in lockstep using record/replay technology.
The Fit for VMware FT
VMware FT requires shared storage on a SAN and does not actually replicate data. It is not yet possible get gain out-of-the-box Site Recovery Manager (SRM) features with FT, but rather hardware FT without third-party software or server clustering. Software solutions like Double-Take typically do not require a shared disk, replicate over a WAN, and can maintain application-specific heartbeats. There are plenty of enterprises, however, that use software like Double-Take to enable hardware redundancy at a single site with shared storage. In these scenarios, VMware FT would be a strong alternative.
Stepping on Toes
Companies like Stratus should start taking note. Stratus's hardware-based FT solution has almost 30 years of maturity behind it, but in an economy where cost-savings are on the top of everyone's list, I anticipate a gradual move starting in 2009 solutions like Stratus ftServer to virtual FT. With VMware being at the head of the virtual FT curve, innovating faster than Citrix and Microsoft, Stratus could see its customer base erode quickly over the next few years.
Stepping on Future Toes
If VMware history tells us anything, FT in its current incarnation is just the beginning (there are plenty of limitations). VMware FT and other virtual FT technologies will start making inroads in 2009, and we should expect to see a combination FT and SRM solution well before 2012. In this virtual FT future, companies like Marathon Technologies will either need to innovate and adapt or face an ever-shrinking customer base.
Taking Action in the Present
I know how much IT departments hate installing third-party kernel-mode drivers to do FT, or spending a lot of time maintaining complex server clusters. If there's already a virtual infrastructure in place, it's time to develop a virtual FT strategy for the New Year. If your organization has yet to implement a virtualization strategy, the time to implement it is now. Virtualization will allow business agility for an entire gamut of scenarios, one of which is providing the kind of uptime that's necessary in today's IT-dependent enterprise.
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