NTT Research and Development 2009 Review of Activities

Overview

Kemari is a new, high-availability technology that enables applications to continue their execution without interruptions, even when a hardware failure occurs. Kemari continually synchronizes the status of virtual machines (VMs^*1) running on different computers by means of software, letting applications to execute transparently on one computer if a hardware failure occurs on the other. Kemari is independent of application software or operating system (OS^*2), and it is applicable to various services operating on Windows^*3 or Linux^*4. It has been released as open-source software implemented as an extension to the Xen^*5 virtual machine monitor.

Features

• Hardware failures are virtualized, and applications can continue their execution without interruptions
• Modifications to application software or OS are unnecessary
• Flexible hardware configuration (e.g., one secondary computer to synchronize several primary computers)
• Deployable with commodity PC servers

Application scenarios

• Server integration solutions combining high-availability and resource utilization
• Highly reliable virtual server hosting services at data centers
• Highly reliable thin client services

• *1 VM: Virtual Machine
• *2 OS: Operating System
• *3 Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
• *4 Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.
• *5 Xen is a trademark of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.