Can virtualization move beyond test and developmental in most companies and become a key component of the core enterprise IT infrastructure? Jerry Melnick discusses the necessity of high availability in a virtual environment and how it can be achieved with Mike Vizard of eWeek.

If you’re interested in using virtualization for essential applications like Exchange but haven’t yet because you’re worried about keeping them available, we encourage you to listen to this podcast and learn about the proliferation of different virtual machines, why there are different types available, and how Marathon’s HA solution can make virtualization of applications like Exchange and SharePoint a reality.

We’re constantly getting questions regarding the what, when, where, why, and how Marathon can help CIOs expand the use of virtualization and availability in their IT infrastructures. Jack Germain of LinuxInsider chatted with Marathon’s CTO Jerry Melnick recently and asked him some of these same questions, which we have excerpted:

LinuxInsider: Numerous industry reports show that the rush to adopt server virtualization is run mostly by very large corporations with a large bank of servers. What part of the market is your company targeting? Are you following the big money trail?

Jerry Melnick: Our product is designed to work like a standard application taken off the shelf and installed right out of the box. Existing availability systems can cause more problems than they solve. Our system is different. That is precisely what midsized companies need.

LI: What barriers does everRun VM take down that you expect to drive a company’s need for what you offer?

Melnick: For one, there is a cost advantage over high-end proprietary products. On the other end, data replication solutions don’t provide all the functions needed. Replication is managing data only. The comprehensiveness of our solution is what makes it unique. The application is unchanged in our environment. In addition, our solution does not need lots of setup.

LI: What are you thinking about beyond the accomplishments of everRun VM as the next virtualization enhancement?

Melnick: Now we have taken the process to the next leap. What I mean is we can now take two servers with hardware virtualized and build a Xen server pool and manage it as a single entity. We can build a virtual machine in Windows by installing out software and give it an interface of all running servers. Our next vision is to have one mechanism to do availability with multiple uses. It will take six months to one year. This will add new levels of choices to select plug-ins for desired results. All of this will be possible through one product.

LI: How do you see this vision changing the industry?

Melnick: We’re breaking through limitations. We are in a position to expand use. Availability is something that everybody is talking about. We are providing ways of doing it.

For Germain’s complete article visit here.

Brian Ducharme from Virtual Strategy Magazine interviewed Simon Crosby at Citrix Synergy and got some great insights from him into the virtualization products at Citrix, their work with XenDesktop and XenServer, and how they work with partners (like us haha). Click on the video below to watch for yourself!

See additional insights from Synergy by David Marshall found here.

We’re elated with the responses we’ve been receiving over the launch of everRun VM. We had an opportunity to speak with some of the great media minds in the virtualization technology space and can’t thank them enough for their time and the positive response to the product launch. To date, we’ve seen everRun VM mentioned in 30+ publications online and offline and we hope to continue the conversation with everyone once the results of the initial beta test are available. As always, we like to recognize the people who spoke with us and took some time to share the everRun news with their audience. We encourage you to not only read the links below, but get to know each of these great minds below and follow them closely. Leave them a comment if you read something you like…trust us, they’ll appreciate it.

Virtualization for Everyone (Interview with our CTO, Jerry Melnick)
Tarry Singh
Virtualization for Everyone

Virtually Speaking
Dan Kusnetzky
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=374

Network World
Laurianne Mclaughlin
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/032408-marathons-virtualization-tool-simplifies-disaster.html

For those who might have missed it, Tarry Singh interviewed Citrix’s CTO, Simon Crosby at VMWorld Europe last month. Check out the video below and see what Simon and the Citrix team have in store for the future (Be advised the video is a bit long so get comfy and grab a drink ). You can also read Tarry’s remarks on his blog here.

Over the last few weeks, many of our readers as well as customers have been asking us for more information about who we are and what we stand for. Because the virtualization market is such a broad waterfront, we find it necessary to make it as clear as possible how we complement the Citrix XenServer Enterprise environment e.g., creating a resilient disaster avoidance virtual environment that protects essential Windows Server applications from unexpected outages and unnecessary complexity .

Rather than answering every question here on the blog, check out the interview between Tarry Singh and our CTO, Jerry Melnick as they go deeper into our business goals and offerings.

For those of you who aren’t able to attend iForum and have yet to see our fault tolerant virtual machines demo here is an interview with Virtual Strategy Magazine shot yesterday. Enjoy!

Recently, Gary had the opportunity to answer a few questions from Longworth Venture Partners, Paul Margolis, regarding the emergence of the high availability market and the benefits of virtualization. The Q&A session that was held can be found here. We encourage you to read through it and have a look at our take on virtualization coming to the high availability space. If you have any feedback, leave us a comment.