DH2i Launches First Container Management Software for Microsoft Windows Server Mid-to-Enterprise Class Applications and Workloads

FORT COLLINS, Colo., Feb. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- DH2i™ today announced the general availability launch of DxEnterprise™ container management software for Microsoft Windows Server, bringing with it a fundamental shift in how today's datacenter will manage Windows Server applications and workloads.  DxEnterprise "containerizes" Windows Server application instances, thereby decoupling the apps and all associated data from host OS and underlying physical infrastructure.  In this way, DxEnterprise delivers fast and transparent application portability, hyperscale cloud-like agility, and ensured high availability.  It also makes apps easier to provision, test, deploy, and manage – all with assured application performance, while lowering associated costs by 30-60%.

DxEnterprise software decouples Windows Server application instances from a physical server, virtual machine (VM) or cloud server via its industry-unique lightweight container called a virtual host, or Vhost.  Each Vhost consists of a logical computer name, an associated IP address (or addresses), Vhost management metadata, and portable native NTFS volumes.  The metadata within the Vhost coordinates container workload management and directs the managed application to launch and run locally.  DxEnterprise containers share a single Windows Server OS instance and are then stacked on virtual or physical servers, providing significant consolidation and application instance portability.

DxEnterprise offers advanced management capabilities that enrich the base container technology. Those capabilities, which include automation and orchestration, drive substantially higher efficiency and provide a self-healing environment that reduces risk.  Its features/benefits include:

• Consolidation – Lightweight shared-OS Vhost technology lets organizations stack multiple containers on a single virtual or physical machine, without the infrastructure redundancy of server virtualization.
• Ensured Health & Availability – Provides protection from infrastructure, OS and application faults.  Should a fault occur it will take automated action to restart and "self heal" all workloads among all remaining active nodes.  DxEnterprise also monitors and ensures application performance through quality of service controls and automation.
• Orchestration & Conditional Logic – Automates the task of dependency coordination. Vhost containers offer multiple workflow insertion points for conditional logic coordination with event handling. Thus, containerized applications with dependencies can be controlled and managed using policies, enabling an entire workflow or service to be made highly available.
• Alerts & Resource Management - Handles resource-contention issues, both within and between containers, which enables organizations to create policies that ensure application level SLAs.  If the managed application encounters insufficient resources, DxEnterprise can automatically move the lowest priority workloads to rectify the resource shortfall.  The management software will also issue alerts if workloads fail to meet performance thresholds or for any defined level of criticality.
• Dependency Coordination & Failover - These management capabilities make DxEnterprise and Vhost containers more suitable to enterprise deployments where organizations need the assurance of application availability in conjunction with dependency coordination.  A Vhost container's ability to have native portable dynamic NTFS volumes, with consistent drive designation, enables enterprise application protection.  If an outage occurs, the active Vhosts simply restarts on one of many potential failover targets, both local or remote, wherever it has access to its shared or replicated data.
• Future Container Support – The universality of the DxEnterprise Vhost container will enable it to support any Windows-based application container that comes to market – including from Microsoft – and will be able to seamlessly coordinate both the new application containers and existing applications.

"We were looking for a near zero downtime solution for all our SQL Server instances, with a better value proposition than any clustering or server virtualization could provide alone," said Dean Bray, Technical Services Manager, Eversheds.  "With DH2i, we are able to consolidate and ensure uptime much more effectively, and at a fraction of the cost for our associated licensing; while solving our future lifecycle and update challenges as a further upside."

"With DxEnterprise, customers can containerize and make any new or existing Windows Server app service, file share, or Microsoft SQL Server instance portable and highly available, with the native dynamic NTFS volumes following the workload – all with just a few clicks," said OJ Ngo, CTO and Co-Founder, DH2i.  "The results include a reduction in software and infrastructure costs of 30%-60% and the elimination of significant lifecycle management expense – and headache.  It also eliminates OS sprawl and reduces OS cost by 8-15 times, and provides near zero application downtime as well as protection from OS, application and infrastructure faults."

"Our customers tell us that they have looked at other vendors that could provide the server 'containers' but learned that these competing technologies would force them to look to third parties for most of the management of said 'containers' – i.e., disk management, HA, DR, dependencies, etc.," Ngo continued.  "DxEnterprise is the only solution that provides both the container and the advanced container management, as one.  The container is a big deal, but it's really more about the management of the container that impacts the business."

"'Containers' has become a popular buzzword in the industry, but usually in the context of Linux. DxEnterprise is focused on applying container technology to Windows applications, and that in itself differentiates this product," said Al Gillen, Program Vice President, Servers and System Software, IDC.  "DxEnterprise brings portability to application instances in a Windows environment, and to ease adoption, it can lift applications off of an existing deployment.  IDC expects that containers will become a popular packaging technology in the near future."

DxEnterprise is immediately available and priced at $1,500 per core ($360 per core per year for 24x7 support and software subscription).

To dive deeper into DxEnterprise, please read the following technical white paper: http://dh2i.com/whitepapers/dxenterprise-for-microsoft-windows-server-sql-server-use-case.

Don't Miss:

World-renowned Microsoft consultant, SQL Server MVP and prolific author Denny Cherry will present, "The Hottest New Container Approach to Microsoft SQL Server Availability," on February 18 at 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time.  During this live webinar event, Cherry will discuss the top challenges his clients are facing today around SQL Server high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR) and consolidation.  He will go on to share the approaches he has found to be most effective in real-world scenarios (as well as those that fell short).  Finally, Cherry will present the findings from his "first-look" hands-on lab review of DH2i's DxEnterprise, Windows Server application portability and management software.  Please register here: http://dh2i.com/webinars/visionary-denny-cherry-presents/

About DH2i

DH2i Company™ is the leading provider of Windows Server application portability and management solutions.  Its newly launched flagship solution, DxEnterprise™ decouples Windows Server applications from the host OS and underlying IT infrastructure – "containerizing" the applications and providing the ability to move them with near-zero downtime from any host, to any host, anywhere.  In doing so, customers are able to better consolidate their environment, build and manage hybrid physical, virtual and/or cloud environments, dramatically simplify management, and ensure service level agreements (SLAs).  The bottom line for customers equals a 30%-70% reduction in software and related infrastructure costs, ensured application availability, and a 70%+ increase in application management productivity.  To learn more, please visit the DH2i website: www.dh2i.com, call: 970-295-4505 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: [email protected].

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© DH2i Company 2015. DH2i, DxEnterprise, DxConsole, DxHADR, DxTransfer, DxCollect and InstanceMobility are trademarks of DH2i Company. All other brand or product names contained in this press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

PR Contact:
Nicole Gorman
Corporate Communications
DH2i Company
M: 508-397-0131
[email protected]

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SOURCE DH2i

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