Neverfail® Extends vAppHA™ to Use VMware vSphere™ 4.1 Application Monitoring API

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at VMworld 2010, Neverfail®, a leading global software company specializing in affordable continuous availability and disaster recovery solutions, today announced an updated version of Neverfail vAppHA™.

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Neverfail's unique application-aware availability management framework has established itself as an ideal protection tool for continuous availability of Tier-1 Microsoft applications across physical and virtual platforms. Launched in 2009 Neverfail vAppHA integrated this same technology with VMware High Availability (HA) and VMware vMotion™, features of VMware vSphere™.

To ensure the deepest level of protection against application outages, vAppHA continuously monitors and analyzes the health and state of Tier-1 applications running within virtual machines. If vAppHA detects availability or performance issues with critical applications, such as SQL Server databases, SharePoint and other bespoke applications, it leverages the VMware vSphere APIs to proactively restart the application or the virtual machine or migrate it to a different host using VMware vMotion.

Starting with VMware vSphere 4.1, an additional API became available which maintains an application heartbeat between a virtual machine and the underlying host. vAppHA is now able to use this API to provide an additional level of assurance that should issues occur within a virtual machine then VMware HA will be aware that action must be taken.

"Organizations making significant investments in VMware vSphere™ are looking for assurance that Tier-1 applications will be continuously available," said Andrew Barnes, senior vice president of corporate development for Neverfail. "As the OEM provider to VMware for VMware vCenter™ Server Heartbeat, it is natural that we support the new VMware vSphere 4.1 Application Monitoring API to provide complete, multi-layer protection against business critical application outages."

Benefits and features of Neverfail vAppHA include:

• Integrated with VMware vSphere™ 4.1 – Neverfail vAppHA integrates with VMware HA and VMware vMotion to help protect businesses against the impact of application-level and host-level failures.
• Leverages Application Monitoring API – Neverfail vAppHA maintains a heartbeat with the new Application Monitoring API with VMware vSphere 4.1 to guard against application and VM failures.
• Implemented with VMware Proven Technology – vAppHA uses the same technology that VMware uses through the OEM agreements that powers VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat.
• Protection across multiple layers – Neverfail vAppHA detects and remediates issues at the application eco-system level by leveraging Neverfail's existing set of application plug-ins.  In the integrated solution, VMware vSphere 4.1 provides protection from infrastructure failures with Neverfail extending the benefits of VMware's high availability technologies to protect against application failures.
• Automatic switchover – Neverfail vAppHA automatically works with VMware vSphere to switch application services over to other servers to avoid application downtime when an application failure or outage is detected.
• Low TCO – Neverfail provides a low total cost of ownership while delivering a wide scope of protection for businesses. Availability rules and policies for Tier-1 Microsoft applications, such as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint, and RIM's BlackBerry infrastructure, come pre-configured, eliminating the need for manual configuration.

"This API provides our partners with additional functionality to deliver highly available application solutions," said Banjot Chanana, group product manager, VMware. "VMware vMotion™, VMware HA and VMware Fault Tolerance continue to provide protection against planned and unplanned downtime due to hardware or operating system maintenance or failures. Neverfail's adoption of the HA application monitoring API provides further availability assurance to our customers when deploying business-critical applications."

Neverfail vAppHA is being demonstrated at VMworld 2010 (booth #1600) in San Francisco, CA from 30th August to 2nd September 2010

About Neverfail

Neverfail is a leading global software company providing affordable data protection, high availability, and disaster recovery solutions focused on keeping users productive. Neverfail's software solutions enable users to remain continuously connected to the live software application irrespective of hardware, software, operating system, or network failures. Neverfail's mission of eliminating application downtime for the end user delivers the assurance of business continuity, removes the commercial and IT management costs associated with system downtime, and enables the more productive use of IT resources. Neverfail, a US Managed Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is a consistent and active early adopter participant and contributor in all mission-critical Microsoft application. It is also a member of the Microsoft SQL Server Always On Alliance. More information can be found at www.neverfailgroup.com.

Neverfail is a trademark of Neverfail Group Limited. All other trademarks, including Microsoft, Windows, and Exchange, are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2009 Neverfail Group Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, or translated into any language or computer language, in any form or by any means without prior express, written consent of Neverfail Group Limited.

SOURCE Neverfail