MSPs will be able to add more services with new DH2i cross-platform capability in 17.5 software release

The new release of the DH2i DxE software also provides automatic Windows/Linux failover for SQL Server 2017 Availability Groups, automatic Windows/Linux failover cluster on AWS and Azure, and management and orchestration of generic Linux services, including native open source databases, with automatic failover.

Don Boxley, DH2i’s co-founder and CEO

Container management software provider DH2i continues to broaden out their DxEnterprise(DxE) Smart Availability software with its version 17.5 release. While the company began with a Windows focus, they have built out their Linux capability, and now unify Windows and Linux management in a single console. This release provides for full management and orchestration of Linux services, including native open source databases, with automatic failover, including automatic Windows/Linux failover for SQL Server 2017, and automatic Windows/Linux failover cluster on AWS and Azure. It also provides a full cross-platform environment that is able to seamlessly move primary workloads and data to and from any cloud, and which will allow MSP partners to offer new services.

Last years DxEnterprise v17 was a key one for the company, and its Virtual Host technology that enables workload portability by decoupling databases and containers from the OS and IT infrastructures, while also conducting health and performance monitoring, alerting, and automated orchestration, and dramatically reducing OS licensing costs.

“Version 17 was an important release, but when we did 17, there were some things we didn’t get done,” said Don Boxley, DH2i’s co-founder and CEO. “We wanted more robust automatic failover, and we wanted full cross-platform migration.”

The automatic failover capability includes automatic fault detection and failover between Windows and Linux.

“Version 17.5 provides a single method for managing and orchestrating application services on Linux, including native open source databases, with automatic failover,” Boxley said. “The automatic Windows/Linux failover capability is an industry first.”

The new cross-platform movement capability is of particular value to SQL Server 2017 users.

“We wanted a cross-platform environment that has the flexibility to seamlessly move primary workloads and data to and from any cloud, and can easily scale cloud-based data analytics and BI nodes,” Boxley said. “This provides a more effective way to use the cloud, especially for analytics and BI, and lets customers leverage the cloud in a manageable way.”

It means for example, that customers can easily move workloads to the IT resource that makes the most sense from both a compute and budgetary standpoint, including things like being able to run SQL Server in a Linux node.

“They can now make more intelligent decisions about how to run specific applications,” Boxley said. “If needed, they now have a clean way to fail over into the cloud. Some performance could be compromised, depending how heavy the load is, but it is still of considerable value.”

The cross-platform capability is also of special value to public cloud and managed service providers.

“They are always looking for new products or capabilities to increase their recurring revenue growth,” Boxley said. “The cross-platform capability gives them a single platform to do things like manage High Availability for Linux. Now, many of them leave it to the customer to figure out how to make High Availability work. With this, they will be able to do it as a service. We think that’s a real innovation. We have been having conversations with large public cloud providers about it, and once it is public, we  expect more MSP interest because it’s an effective way for them to offer more services.”

DxE v17.5 is available now.