Leverage Server Virtualization for DR Affordability and Agility

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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.

Leverage Server Virtualization for DR Affordability and Agility Research & Tools

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.

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Authors

John Sloan

Laura Hansen-Kohls

Search Code: 17756
Last Revised: March 9, 2010

TAGS:

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