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Leverage Server Virtualization for DR Affordability and Agility

Virtualization is not just for consolidation - drive cost and complexity out of system availability and restore.

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Your Challenge

  • Situation. For many organizations, particularly midsized enterprises, improved infrastructure availability and recovery is as big a driver for server virtualization as consolidation.
  • Opportunity. Server virtualization will reduce planned and unplanned downtime and reduce the costs of architecting DR solutions.
  • Solution. This set explains how virtualization can be leveraged for better availability and DR and points to particular issues to watch for in backup.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

The cost savings of consolidation grow with the number of servers virtualized, but all enterprises have equal challenges in business continuity and disaster recovery which virtualization can benefit.

Impact and Result

Virtual servers have high availability and faster recovery than physical servers. Leverage virtualization to lower costs and improve the efficiency of business continuity and disaster recovery.


Get to Action

  1. Understand how virtualization changes the system recovery game.
    • Virtualization turns problems of system availability and recovery on its head by applying file availability, backup, and recovery practice to system availability and recovery – a virtual machine is a file.
    • System restore – particularly in off site scenarios – is typically complex, expensive and time consuming.
  2. Start with the storage infrastructure.
    • The storage infrastructure – where the VM file lives – is a critical enabler for virtual server management.
    • The virtualization layer will leverage the underlying storage’s ability to do snapshots and replication including site to site replication.
    • Look also to how shared storage can enable higher availability and decreased downtime for running VMs.
  3. Automate replication and recovery processes.
    • Replicating the VM file from one site to another enables faster off-site recovery. However, the recovery process will still require a multi-step process.
    • VMware users can look to Site Recovery Manager to monitor the site to site replication at the storage level and automate site recovery from replicated VMs.
  4. Know that since VM backup impacts both file and system restore, backup software has to be adept at both.

    Backup of virtual environments poses particular challenges in that it has elements of both file level backup and system imaging.

Tags

disaster, virtualization, DRP, disaster recovery planning, disaster recovery plan, disaster planning, disaster plan, server virtualization, DR, disasters, storage virtualization

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Virtualization is not just for consolidation - drive cost and complexity out of system availability and restore.

Solution Road Map

Other Solution Sets in Server & Storage Virtualization

  1. Get the Most out of Server Virtualization
    Develop a strategy to move infrastructure from a virtual fantasy to a virtual reality.
  2. Vendor Landscape: Server Virtualization
    Server virtualization continues to drive value in infrastructure consolidation and management while laying the foundation of private and public computing.
  3. Avoid Server Virtualization Implementation Pain
    Virtualization is not a magic bullet. Poor scoping of infrastructure and business needs will lead to implementation pain.
  4. Leverage Server Virtualization for DR Affordability and Agility
    Virtualization is not just for consolidation - drive cost and complexity out of system availability and restore.
  5. Build an Optimized Infrastructure-as-a-Service Internal Cloud
    The best computing cloud is the one you've already started with server virtualization.
  6. Use Cloud Computing to Achieve Small Enterprise Savings
    Small businesses are in a unique position to gain advantage with cloud computing.
  7. Vendor Landscape: Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service
    Options are proliferating as Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides a highly agile and low capital cost option for outsourcing IT infrastructure.
  8. Manage & Plan Capacity for the Internal Cloud
    You cannot afford to assume that the data center has unlimited capacity; this is even more true for the internal cloud.
  9. Vendor Landscape: Cloud Management
    Add a layer of abstraction and automation to your infrastructure to create a private, virtual private, public, or hybrid cloud environment.
  10. Power the IaaS Cloud with a Cloud Management Solution
    Virtualization alone does not provide the automation, self-service, orchestration, and metering you need to offer a true cloud infrastructure service.
View the full Solution Road Map