Neverfail today announced the launch of Neverfail for VMware VirtualCenter. The new software enables firms to make a real time replica of their VirtualCenter management server.

When used in conjunction with VirtualCenter 2.5, the two servers can be linked using normal Internet links, without the need for a VPN connection.

John Posavatz, vice-president of product management, told The Hypervisor, “We create a fail over pair, and the fail over system can either be in the same datacentre or at a remote site. Users might get a 30 second delay while the application doesn’t respond, but otherwise they don’t notice the switchover. They don’t need to reconnect or restart their application after failing over.”

Posavatz: Users don’t notice failover

Posavatz said the new product is based on the same core technology as Neverfail’s existing product line, which is designed to protect various applications running on Microsoft Windows. “Many customers run a physical primary servers at their main datacentre, and use Neverfail to maintain fail over virtual machines in their DR site,” he added.

While Neverfail for VirtualCenter works well in a VC 2.5 environment, VC 2.0 is tightly coupled with each ESX server using IP addresses rather than by a fully qualified domain name (fqdn). In a worst case scenario of VC2.0 and no LAN or VLAN connection, an administrator would need to update the IP addresses in the VirtualCenter fail-over system so it could connect to the ESX systems. But VC 2.5 uses fqdns and DNS, so the fail over can occur automatically.

Neverfail for VMware VirtualCenter will be available on Monday 21st January. The price covers a pair of servers and depends on the number of CPU sockets, starting at £8,000 for protecting a single socket system.