Quorum® Offers Complete Virtualization Management Solution to Extend the Capabilities of Citrix® XenServer 4.1 Enterprise Edition™

Overview

This document provides an overview of the Quorum Virtual Optimization System™ (VOS), a complete virtualization management solution delivered in the form of a turnkey appliance called the Enterprise Management Appliance for XenServer™ (EMAX).

At the core of Quorum's VOS is a configurable policy engine, which is both flexible and granular, that allows XenServer Administrators to effectively and efficiently monitor, manage and optimize XenServer virtualized server environments automatically based on pre-defined service levels. With EMAX monitoring the XenServer virtualized server environment 24x7, Administrators are free to focus their attention on the numerous other tasks they face on a daily basis.

Benefits of Quorum's VOS

Quorum's VOS offers the following features for XenServer virtualized server environments:

• In-Context High Availability
• Virtual Application Management
• Virtual Resource Management
• End-to-End Business Continuity

In-Context High Availability refers to high availability of application workloads to ensure maximum user productivity. An example of how Quorum's VOS accomplishes In-Context High Availability includes the ability to power up a specified virtual machine (VM), a clone of a physical machine, immediately upon detecting a failure of the physical machine. Once the VM is up and running, any applications that were running on the physical machine can be launched on the VM.

One scenario in which the value-add of this feature can be easily recognized is when the physical machine that incurs the failure is running the Citrix Access Platform Web Interface (WI). Without Quorum's VOS, any new users attempting to access published applications or desktops from a XenApp server through the Web Interface would be unsuccessful. Using VOS, a policy that boots up the VM and then launches the WI could be invoked that would allow new users to access published applications/desktops on the XenApp server almost immediately after the physical machine experienced the failure, ensuring user productivity is maintained.

Another area in which Quorum's VOS showcases its effectiveness is application health monitoring and management. For example, a frequently used business-critical application running in a XenServer VM begins to show a noticeable degree of latency due to excessive use of resources (i.e., memory). Using VOS, the health of the application would be continuously monitored so that if a rise in memory consumption was detected that lasted for a preset period of time, a policy would be invoked to stop the application and then start a new instance of the application, minimizing the adverse affects on user productivity that would have resulted from the latency detected in the initial instance of the application.

Quorum's VOS is also highly effective at managing virtual resources. Consider a processor-intensive application running on two VMs, both of which are running on a single XenServer host system, with VOS continuously monitoring the CPU utilization of both VMs as well as the XenServer host itself. In the event that CPU utilization begins to spike above a predefined threshold on one of the VMs, a VOS policy would be invoked that triggers one of the VMs to be XenMotioned to another XenServer host with available CPU resources, effectively load-balancing the two VMs between XenServers to ensure optimal levels of application performance.

Quorum's VOS ensures business continuity and agility through a variety of methods, including XenServer high availability, restarting applications on VMs or restarting VMs on secondary or backup XenServer hosts when application or VM failures are detected; consolidating servers by XenMotioning VMs on underutilized XenServer hosts to a single XenServer host and shutting down the underutilized XenServer hosts to conserve resources; and reporting and acting upon quality of service metrics to ensure optimal application and/or system health and performance.

Conclusion

Employing Quorom's VOS-based EMAX extends the capabilities of XenServer virtualized server environments by offering In-Context High Availability, Virtual Application and Resource Management, and business continuity, all key attributes inherent in an Enterprise-class virtualized server solution.

By creating policies that monitor the health and performance levels of both applications and systems and take corrective action automatically when predefined thresholds are met and/or exceeded, XenServer Administrators can enhance the manageability and usability of their XenServer virtualized server environments, confident that their applications and servers will continue to run with little to no interruption.

Brochure

Download a brochure explaining the benefits of the Enterprise Management Appliance for XenServer, along with whitepapers, case studies, and more