Double-Take Software announced the availability of the latest version of its flagship Double-Take for Windows product and enhancements to other products in the company's suite including complete platform support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. Double-Take for Windows solves IT managers' workload portability and availability challenges by making it easy to migrate physical workloads into virtual machines with minimal user downtime and to protect the uptime of critical workloads on physical and virtual machines by using real-time replication and failover. Double-Take Software provides customers with software solutions that migrate, back-up, protect and flexibly run workloads in both physical and virtual environments.

"Customers are rapidly deploying Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center management tools to drive down costs, increase IT efficiency and enable business agility," said David Greschler, director of virtualization strategy at Microsoft Corp. "The Double-Take for Hyper-V solution helps customers keep their virtualized workloads highly available. Our collaboration allows mutual customers to have access to cost-effective solutions that can help them manage their physical and virtualized IT infrastructure."

Overview of the key enhancements to the Double-Take Software product suite:

Deeper support for the Windows Server 2008 operating system in Livewire, Cargo, and Double-Take for Windows including its Application Manager and full-server protection features.

Broader Capabilities for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008: In addition to its Double-Take for Hyper-V product, the company now offers a new version of the Double-Take for Windows Virtual Recovery Assistant. This new version enables migration of physical servers to Hyper-V virtual machines, reduces P2V migration downtime, and allows for migration between geographical locations in support of datacenter consolidations and moves. The Virtual Recovery Assistant can also be used to automate the protection of a workload running on a physical server with a virtualized workload at a disaster recovery site.

Double-Take Application Manager feature: New functionality includes enhancements to support for clustered SQL servers and full support for SQL Server 2008.

Double-Take Cargo: In addition to now supporting Windows Server 2008, the latest version of Double-Take Cargo includes new support clustered file servers, enabling IT administrators to archive file-based data and optimize storage in both standalone and clustered server configurations.