VMware demos Continuous Availability @ VMworld

VMware HA (High Availability) is one of the main benefits of moving to a virtualized environment. In a typical environment, the VM's disks reside on shared storage. 2 or more ESX servers monitor each other, and if there is a hardware failure on an ESX box, another ESX server can take over and start the machine back up. This is great, because it typically means that downtime for applications is reduced to the amount of time it takes the OS to boot.

I've been watching Scott Lowe's blog as he liveblogs today's VMworld keynote, and apparently they showed something called Continuous Availability.

Continuous Availability actually keeps a running copy of the same VM on a second ESX server. The secondary VM is in a standby state, and the execution stream from the active VM is constantly replicated over to the secondary. If a failure is detected on the primary VM, the secondary takes over with almost no downtime at all.

I can't wait for this to be implemented as a feature in ESX (maybe 3.5?). It takes availability and disaster recovery to a new level, and further justifies our move to a virtual infrastructure.