Symantec ApplicationHA
Fast recovery from application failures

Features & Benefits:

Key Features

• Fast recovery from application failures
• Support for a wide range of hypervisors including VMware ESX, Solaris LDOM, IBM LPAR and KVM
• Management and high availability of Virtual Business Services (VBS) for applications composed of multiple components running on different physical and virtual tiers
• Integrated with Symantec Backup Exec providing recovery if a virtual machine becomes corrupt by restoring the last known good copy of the virtual machine image (Unlimited guest machine protection from a single Backup Exec license)
• Fully compatible with key VMware features including VMwareHA, vMotion, DRS, Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) and key virtualization features such as Live Migration and Warm Migration on UNIX platforms
• Simplified, centralized administration and management through integration with vSphere Client, vCenter and Veritas Operations Manager (VOM)
• Simple setup through push-install from vSphere client, auto-discovery, and auto-configuration
• Role based access control through vSphere client

Key Benefits

• Take advantage of cost savings from virtualization by placing business critical applications on virtual machines
• Minimize downtime for applications in virtual machines without compromising on advanced virtualization features
• Reduces downtime for the entire business service with components running across physical and virtual, and across operating systems
• Recovers the application and the data through integration with Symantec Backup Exec
• Easy to install and configure
• Provides choice of management console for ongoing management (vCenter or Veritas Operations Manager)

Benefits

• Gain visibility and control of applications inside VMware VM — Minimize risks associated with application downtime by monitoring not only the VMs, but also the applications running inside them.
• Monitor hundreds of applications' health and recover from failures — ApplicationHA monitors hundreds of applications and their services. In the event of a failure, it coordinates with the VM to restart.
• Centrally manage applications — ApplicationHA is fully integrated with Operations Manager, allowing administrators centralized management for all applications in physical and virtual environments.

In VMware environments, ApplicationHA provides the following additional benefits:

• Coordinated VM reboot — ApplicationHA provides automated application recovery and coordinates a VM reboot with VMware, when appropriate.
• Simple administration with full integration with vCenter — Reduce training costs and the need for additional tools through seamless integration with vCenter, which allows for centralized management and eliminates multiple management tools. From vCenter you can configure, monitor, start, and stop applications running inside VMs.
• Improve availability without compromising on advanced VMware functionality — ApplicationHA is fully compatible with VMware features such as VMware HA, vMotion™, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware Fault Tolerance (FT).
• Integration with image restoration software — ApplicationHA is integrated with Symantec Backup Exec™ which restores a previous version of the VMs as remediation in the event of VM or operating system corruption.
• Integration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager™ — ApplicationHA is integrated with Site Recovery Manager to provide application awareness in a disaster recovery plan. When failing the VMs over to the disaster recovery site, ApplicationHA continues to monitor the application health with the VMware HA cluster on the recovery site. Through this integration the application status is recorded in the compliance report generated during a Site Recovery Manager test or actual disaster recovery.

In Red Hat KVM, IBM AIX LPAR, and Oracle VM on Solaris SPARC virtual environments, ApplicationHA provides the following additional benefits:

• Gain visibility and control of applications inside non-VMware VMs — Veritas Cluster Server and ApplicationHA minimize risks associated with application downtime by monitoring not only the VMs, but the applications running inside them and provide automated application recovery to coordinate a VM reboot with Cluster Server, when appropriate.
• Improve availability without compromising on advanced virtualization functionality — ApplicationHA is fully compatible with virtualization capabilities such as Live Partition (LPAR), warm migration, and live migration.

Gain visibility and control of applications inside VMs

ApplicationHA provides visibility to applications running inside VMs to ensure high availability of business-critical applications. Applications can be monitored directly from vCenter (VMware only) or Operations Manager.

Improve availability without compromising with advanced virtualization capabilities

ApplicationHA is fully compatible with common VMware features such as VMware vMotion™, Site Recovery Manager, VMware Fault Tolerance (FT), Distributed Resource Scheduler, Oracle VM features such as Live Migration and Warm Migration and AIX Logical Partitions features such as Live Partition Mobility. ApplicationHA allows for the concurrent use of these tools, all while the application is still being monitored and protected. Users can move VMs without risking the application's protection.

Centralized management across physical and virtual environments

Managing both physical and virtual server environments can be challenging, especially when applications or entire business services are composed of multiple components, running on different physical and virtual tiers and interacting with each other. Virtual Business Services, powered by ApplicationHA and Cluster Server, simplifies multi-tier application management through Operations Manager and increases the availability of the entire service through automatic orchestration of application faults across dependent tiers. For VMware users, Operations Manager also provides another option to manage and monitor applications running inside VMware VMs without having to proliferate access to vCenter.

System Requirements:

Supported Guest OS Platforms

VMware:

• Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2 (32-bit)
• Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2 (64-bit)
• SUSE Enterprise Linux 10, 11 (64-bit)
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, 6.1 (64-bit)
• Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 64-bit

Non-VMware

• Redhat KVM (RHEL 6.1): RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, 6.1 (64-bit)
• Oracle VM for Solaris SPARC 2.0 (LDOM 2.0): Solaris SPARC 5.10
• IBM Logical Partitions (LPAR): AIX 6.1

Selected Supported Applications

• Windows: Microsoft Exchange 2010, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, IIS, Custom Applications
• Linux: Oracle, SAP, WebLogic, Custom Applications
• Solaris: Oracle, DB2, Apache WebServer, Custom Applications
• AIX: Oracle, DB2, Apache WebServer, Custom Applications

Documentation:

Download the Symantec ApplicationHA Datasheet (PDF).