Symantec has announced enhancements to its Veritas Cluster Server for VMware ESX and Veritas Application Director solutions.

Cluster Server for VMware ESX now provides expanded support for critical business application environments like Microsoft Exchange and enhances disaster recovery capabilities with broader data replication support. Application Director introduces heterogeneous virtual machine management capabilities to control virtual machines and optimise server resource utilisation in large data centres.

Cluster Server for VMware provides added protection for applications in virtual machines by monitoring the health of the application, the guest OS, the virtual machine, the virtual resources, the physical server and the underlying storage. Enhancements include expanded support for critical business applications, including Microsoft Exchange and SAP, enabling IT professionals to have confidence as they move business-critical applications into virtualised environments.

Key enhancements to Application Director in this new release will enable users to track resource utilisation, and then start, stop, move or resize virtual machines to improve utilisation and ease overall management. Application Director also allows users to create and enforce policies, based on the requirements of the application, enabling them to increase application availability and flexibly respond to changes in application workloads.