Disaster Recovery

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The shared responsibility of data protection requires collaboration between infrastructure software and backup software. Both systems must work together to ensure data resiliency, protection, and recovery. Relying solely on one or the other can leave gaps, creating vulnerabilities that put critical data and operations at risk.

Learn why data protection requires shared responsibility.

In this shared responsibility model, infrastructure software (including hypervisors, storage, and networking) handles hardware failures and maintains uptime. Meanwhile, backup software safeguards against user errors and cyberattacks and ensures long-term data retention. This balanced approach ensures complete protection across all potential points of failure.

The Complexity of Modern IT Environments

Data centers today are more intricate than ever before. Enterprises rely on a combination of hypervisors, bare-metal systems, containers, and cloud services across various platforms and environments. The traditional single-backup-system approach is no longer sufficient. Businesses must implement solutions that address the unique challenges of each infrastructure component.

Infrastructure software, which manages virtual machines, networking, and storage, should provide data resilience, ensuring that workloads continue running despite multiple simultaneous hardware failures. Meanwhile, backup software protects data from soft errors—such as accidental deletions, ransomware attacks, or software bugs—and provides long-term data retention and compliance.

The shared responsibility model creates a structured way for infrastructure and backup systems to complement each other, ensuring no gaps in data protection.

On Thursday, October 3rd, at 11:00 AM ET, we will explore the shared responsibility model in greater depth and demonstrate how its two components can work together to deliver unprecedented levels of resilience, protection, and recovery.

Register here to secure your spot!

VergeOS and Storware: A Shared Responsibility for Data Protection

The collaboration between infrastructure and backup solutions is at the heart of the shared responsibility model. The integration of VergeOS and Storware provides an excellent example of an end-to-end solution for data resilience, protection, and recovery.

VergeOS: The Role of Infrastructure in Data Resiliency

VergeOS is more than just a VMware alternative. It’s an ultraconverged infrastructure consolidating the hypervisor, storage, and networking into a single piece of software. In addition to delivering a more efficient infrastructure software solution, this approach allows VergeOS to provide superior protection against hardware failures, ensuring superior uptime and resiliency.

One of VergeOS’s standout features is its IOclone technology, which creates fully independent snapshots of selected objects, such as virtual data centers, instances, or virtual machines. Unlike traditional snapshots that rely on the redirect-on-write method, VergeOS’s IOclone ensures that snapshots are independent of the original object. If the original object is deleted, the snapshot remains intact and can be restored.

VergeOS also incorporates integrated deduplication, making snapshots highly efficient in terms of storage capacity consumption. This enables businesses to keep thousands of snapshots over long periods without any performance degradation.

In addition, VergeOS features ioGuardian, a real-time recovery solution that activates during multiple hardware failures. With inline recovery, ioGuardian provides missing data segments to virtual machines in real time, preventing downtime even during catastrophic failures. This ensures infrastructure resiliency, addressing gaps that often occur when infrastructure systems rely too heavily on backup systems for recovery.

Storware: The Role of Backup in Data Protection and Recovery

While VergeOS handles hardware-level protection and resiliency, Storware ensures data is safeguarded from user errors, accidental deletions, and ransomware attacks. Storware’s backup solution supports KVM-based hypervisors (including VergeOS), bare-metal systems, containers, and cloud environments such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Storware’s two-stage backup architecture offers scalability and flexibility in data protection. In the first stage, Storware collects data from multiple sources and stores it temporarily in Storware nodes. These nodes can scale to meet increasing capacity or performance demands.

In the second stage, the data is transferred to a final repository, which could include object storage, file systems (NFS or SMB), enterprise-grade storage (such as Dell EMC Data Domain or HPE StoreOnce), or even tape libraries for organizations that need offline data storage.

Storware’s support for incremental forever backups captures only changes after the initial backup, reducing backup times and network strain. Additionally, Storware performs data consolidation in the staging area, ensuring that recoveries are full-speed, even when multiple incremental backups are involved.

When integrated with VergeOS, Storware leverages Change Block Tracking (CBT) technology to optimize backup efficiency by minimizing the amount of data transferred over the network.

Why the Shared Responsibility Model is Crucial for Modern Businesses

The partnership between VergeOS and Storware highlights the power of the shared responsibility model. Together, they provide comprehensive protection across all failure points—whether hardware-related or human error.

Organizations relying solely on backup software for all data protection risk gaps in infrastructure resiliency. Conversely, relying only on infrastructure software without a dedicated backup strategy can make meeting compliance or data protection best practices demands challenging. The shared responsibility model ensures that both systems—infrastructure and backup—work together harmoniously.

With VergeOS managing uptime and resiliency during hardware failures and Storware protecting against soft errors and enabling long-term retention, businesses can be confident that their data is fully protected. This holistic approach is particularly crucial for organizations managing multi-tenant environments, hybrid cloud infrastructures, or complex virtualized systems, where any failure can lead to severe consequences.

Conclusion: Shared Responsibility Equals Stronger Protection

Modern IT environments are vital to an organization’s success and demand a comprehensive approach to data protection. By adopting the shared responsibility model, organizations can ensure that infrastructure and backup systems work together to provide seamless data resiliency, protection, and recovery.

The collaboration between VergeOS and Storware exemplifies this model in action. VergeOS protects infrastructure from hardware failures and ensures uptime, while Storware safeguards data against soft errors and provides long-term retention. Together, they offer a turnkey solution that helps businesses of all sizes protect their most valuable asset—their data.

Join Our Webinar: How to Protect VMware Alternatives with VergeIO and Storware
Interested in learning more about how infrastructure and backup software can work together to safeguard your data? Join us for a live webinar, “How to Protect VMware Alternatives with VergeIO and Storware,” where we’ll explore these concepts further and demonstrate how the two solutions integrate seamlessly.

  • Date: Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

  • Time: 11:00 AM ET / 8:00 AM PT

  • Duration: 30 minutes + Q&A
    Register here~ to secure your spot!

Filed Under: Blog, Protection Tagged With: , ,

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IT professionals considering a hypervisor alternative to reduce costs must also focus on minimizing VMware migration downtime. The requirements for reducing migration downtime extend beyond automated copying and conversion of VMware virtual machines (VMs). Essential steps for reducing VMware migration downtime include:

  1. Seamless pre-preparation of the target hypervisor
  2. Fast identification and complete copying of VMs
  3. Rapid conversion of VMs in seconds, not minutes
  4. Scalable testing of converted VMs
  5. Frequent updating of migrated VMs
  6. Extending migration to VMware DR

Seamless Pre-Preparation of the Target Hypervisor

Minimizing VMware migration downtime

The first step in minimizing VMware migration downtime is preparing the target hypervisor. This involves allocating hardware and getting the hypervisor up and running. Look for hypervisors that can run on existing hardware, particularly those that can operate on older servers that are no longer supported by VMware but are still viable.

Hypervisor vendors offering turnkey hardware and software solutions are less desirable due to added expenses. Even if they provide loaned hardware or extended terms, the duration may not suffice for thoroughly vetting their solution and completing the migration.

Fast Identification and Complete Copying of VMs

Minimizing VMware migration downtime hinges on the speed of initially seeding eligible VMs to the target hypervisor. Opt for solutions with integrated migration functions, avoiding separate or third-party applications. While transfer speeds depend on VM storage requirements and network speed, separate modules can negatively impact transfer times.

Minimizing VMware migration downtime

Ideally, the solution should log directly into vCenter and list VMs available for migration. You should be able to select which VMs to migrate individually or in groups. The migration function should use VMware’s backup APIs for the fastest possible transfer, ensuring all VM data, including configuration information, is captured.

The target hypervisor should initially maintain VMs in their VMware format without converting them on the fly, which would slow transfers. This approach provides an additional checkpoint or backup copy if something goes wrong during testing. The hypervisor should also have integrated deduplication to minimize storage capacity usage for VM backups.

Rapid Conversion of Migrated VMs

Once VM data is transferred, conversion to the new hypervisor format should be quick, taking seconds rather than minutes. During testing, the conversion time is critical. If it takes five minutes per VM, a 100 VM environment would take over eight hours to load for testing.

VergeIO has demonstrated converting VMs in seconds. For example, in the video below, we show how to convert 10 VMs in 10 seconds.

Scalable Testing of Migrated VMs

Reducing VMware migration downtime also requires scalable testing of converted VMs. Efficient and thorough testing reduces the need for frequent data reloads and surprises in production. Multi-tenancy and a robust snapshot capability are critical for creating a scalable testing environment.

With multi-tenancy in place, during conversion, IT can place all converted VMs into a tenant or create tenants by workload, department, or IT team specialty. With the robust snapshot function and deduplication integrated into the hypervisor, IT can instantly create multiple clones of each tenant without consuming capacity or impacting performance. The result is space-efficient “virtual labs” for testing purposes. Each tenant snapshot can be assigned to different teams for testing without fear of one group’s work impacting another.

Frequent Updating of Migrated VMs

Minimizing VMware migration downtime

In typical testing, IT copies a group of VMs to the alternative hypervisor, tests them for compatibility, and performs a final copy before conversion. The source VMware VM often needs to be down during this final transfer, resulting in multiple minutes, if not more, of downtime per VM, leading to hours of total outage.

Minimizing VMware migration downtime requires an alternative hypervisor solution that allows frequent updates of copied VMs via granular data transfer methods like change block tracking (CBT). CBT enables frequent updates of copied VMs, each taking only a few minutes. This approach allows IT to perform tests, verify compatibility, and finalize updates with minimal outages.

Extending VMware Migration to DR

The combination of fast initial transfers, frequent granular updates, and rapid conversion makes the alternative hypervisor an ideal VMware DR solution. VM copies are updated more frequently than typical backups, and the target environment is more robust and production-capable than typical backup storage appliances. Using the VMware alternative for DR provides value until the final cutover.

The 7-minute whiteboard session below explains how to design and use VergeOS for the VMware DR use case.

VergeOS for VMware Migration and DR

VergeOS meets all the requirements with its integrated storage, virtualization, and networking services. It runs on various server hardware, enabling IT to repurpose older hardware for staging or DR environments. VergeOS ioMigrate leverages VMware’s backup API for fast VM copying, maintaining a protected copy for testing.

VergeOS converts VMs quickly, as shown in the video, where 10 VMs are converted in 10 seconds. Its Virtual Data Center technology enables scalable testing, allowing multiple secure virtual labs to be created in seconds. ioMigrate uses VMware Backup APIs for efficient VM repository updates, making VergeOS an ideal DR solution that is better than array-based replication while testing the platform’s functionality.

Conclusion

Minimizing VMware migration downtime is crucial for IT professionals seeking cost-effective hypervisor alternatives. Achieving this requires seamless preparation of the target hypervisor, fast and complete VM copying, rapid conversion, scalable testing, and frequent updates. VergeOS addresses all these needs with its integrated ioMigrate and ioProtect capabilities, ensuring efficient and quick migration while minimizing downtime.

VergeOS offers a robust migration and disaster recovery solution, allowing organizations to repurpose existing hardware, maintain VM integrity during testing, and leverage frequent updates for smooth transitions. By adopting VergeOS, IT departments can reduce migration downtime and enhance their overall DR strategy, adding significant value to their infrastructure.

To watch a full scale test of our VMware Migration and VMware DR capabilities watch our on-demand, registration-free webinar: “Comparing VMware DR Strategies“

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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VMware DR Tools Assessment

The list of threats to data center operations never stops growing, and IT professionals must periodically perform a VMware DR Tools Assessment. During these assessments, they should evaluate tools to:

  1. Address new data center threats
  2. Improve Recovery Point and Recovery Time Objectives (RPO/RTO)
  3. Simplify recovery processes
  4. Reduce costs

Generally, there are three types of tools that IT relies on to meet its organization’s requirements:

  • Backup and Recovery
  • Array-based Replication
  • Infrastructure-wide Replication

These tools lay the foundation for a disaster recovery strategy. They directly impact RPO, RTO, and affordability.

Backup And RecoveryArray-Based ReplicationInfrastructure-Wide Replication
Holistic ProtectionGoodPoorExcellent
RTO AttainmentGoodExcellentExcellent
RPO AttainmentPoorPoorExcellent
Hypervisor TransitionGoodPoorExcellent
DR OperationsPoorPoorExcellent
Cost$$$$$$$$
Comparing VMware DR Strategies

Live Webinar and Demonstration: “Comparing VMware DR Strategies” — Register Now

Meeting Classic VMware DR Threats

It is critical during a VMware DR tools assessment that IT ensures they address the classic types of threats to a VMware environment, such as floods, tornadoes, and power outages, which persist alongside the more recent threat of ransomware. IT needs to look for ways to improve RPO/RTO, simplify the recovery process, and also look for opportunities to lower DR costs.

Backup and recovery solutions are considered the least expensive option but also the least seamless in terms of recovery. While most solutions can recover a few virtual machines (VMs) on backup appliances, these appliances are not designed for the long-term hosting of many VMs. Backup and recovery tools have improved their resiliency to ransomware, with some now offering automated remote site recovery, but most still can’t detect an attack, so prolonged recoveries are commonplace, even with excellent backup strategies.

The critical challenge for backup and recovery is the time between protection events, often failing to meet increasingly strict organizational RPOs. An “aggressive” strategy of four hours may not be sufficient to meet organizational service level agreements (SLA). The time it takes to reposition data on production servers means that backup and recovery often fail to meet most organizational RTOs. Once the total cost of backup infrastructure (software licensing, dedicated storage hardware, compute server requirements at the DR site) is evaluated, the theoretical cost advantage of backup and recovery often dissipates.

Array-based replication is relatively seamless in transporting data to a DR site, but the target array at the DR site must be nearly identical to the primary site’s array. Dedicated arrays also can’t host VMs, so the customer must equip and manage server infrastructure at the DR site. Like backup and recovery, array-based replication doesn’t capture details that are not on the actual array, such as network configurations and VM settings.

Array-based replication provides a much more frequent protection event capability than a backup but is myopically focused on its data. If all data, including boot and configuration files, are on a single dedicated array, then array-based replication meets most organizations’ RTO demands. However, if data is on boot drives, network hardware, or different types of dedicated storage arrays, IT must ensure consistency between them. This often places them outside of the RPO. Another concern is the high cost of buying dual dedicated arrays, which places the strategy outside the budget of most organizations.

Infrastructure-wide replication encapsulates the entire infrastructure, capturing everything into a single object. It provides a complete, self-contained environment. The servers at the DR site can simultaneously run VMs and their data and network functionality such as firewalls and routing. Infrastructure replication, like VergeIO’s ioProtect, enables IT to create a turnkey pod easily deployed in the DR site. Since it is self-contained, there is no need to worry about consistency across networking and storage. Infrastructure replication meets and exceeds most organizations’ RPOs and RTOs. The consolidation also makes deployment extremely cost-effective.

Meeting New VMware DR Threats

VMware DR Tools Assessment

A critical part of a VMware DR tools assessment is making sure the tool can withstand new threats and use cases. While ransomware and natural disasters like fire, flood, and hurricanes remain top concerns, today, customers also want to ensure they are not locked into a particular hypervisor. Broadcom’s recent acquisition of VMware has shown IT professionals that licensing costs can increase quickly and dramatically. Broadcom’s delay tactics in providing renewal quotes only exacerbates this problem, leaving customers less time to transition. In addition to meeting the classic DR needs, modern VMware DR tools need to be able to help customers move to another hypervisor seamlessly at the click of a button.

These tools must provide proper backup and disaster recovery, continuously updating the DR environment while supporting the movement of VMs to an alternate hypervisor. Ensuring the secondary environment is current enables customers to verify VM functionality before a renewal surprise.

Backup and recovery solutions can provide some of this functionality, assuming they can restore “into” other hypervisors. However, most can’t. IT professionals must restore their VMs under the original hypervisor and manually convert them, often using a separate utility. The process is time-consuming and makes pre-disaster test verification challenging.

Array-based replication has almost no value in helping customers prepare for transitioning to other hypervisors since most alternative hypervisors can’t access VMware’s proprietary format.

Infrastructure-wide replication solutions may be the best suited for the “business” type of disaster, assuming they offer more than just one-time migration. For example, VergeIO’s ioProtect can continuously protect the VMware environment. IT logs ioProtect directly into vCenter and keeps copies updated quickly, thanks to change block tracking. Data is stored in the VMware format if IT needs it for a one-off recovery. When the “disaster” is a surprisingly more expensive renewal quote, customers can convert to the alternative hypervisor within seconds. The rapid transition makes testing DR and experimenting with a new hypervisor painless.

Conclusion

When performing a VMware DR tools assessment, backup and recovery is often considered the most cost-effective and manual of the available disaster recovery tools. IT must restore data to a new environment; that transfer takes time. Backup also may not protect all the extraneous files in the environment unless specifically pointed at them. Some solutions can help customers transition between hypervisors. Still, most can only restore a VM in its original format, requiring the customer to import the VM into the new environment manually.

Array-based replication is the most expensive option. Although it provides near-seamless replication between arrays, those arrays often must be identical. Additionally, any data or configuration files not on the array must be protected and recovered separately. Lastly, it does little to empower customers to move to or test another hypervisor.

Test Drive VergeOS Now

Infrastructure replication checks all the boxes. It provides cost-effective and simple recovery in classic disaster scenarios and, with the right migration capabilities, can assist customers when and if they need to move quickly to another hypervisor. It also provides a very high “first-try” success rate on both declared disasters and tests.

To learn more about infrastructure replication and how it compares to other disaster recovery strategies, join us for our live webinar, “Comparing VMware Disaster Recovery Strategies.”

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: , ,

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While instant recovery was a critical step forward, customers are now looking for an instant recovery upgrade. The next advancement of recovery needs to maintain its point-in-time independence while shrinking recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). Traditional methods of data recovery can often lead to significant downtime, disrupt business operations, and lead to potential revenue loss. Instant recovery has filled that gap for a decade, but now customers need more. VergeOS’ ioGuardian for VergeOS is changing the landscape by offering real-time data recovery.

Understanding Real-time Recovery with ioGuardian

ioGuardian for VergeOS is a backup solution integrated into VergeOS. It is an instant recovery upgrade. Unlike conventional backup software, it offers inline recovery capabilities that ensure continuous data access, even in scenarios where traditional hardware failure protections fail, such as during multiple drive or node failures. Even instant recovery might cause delays, but ioGuardian delivers missing data segments to virtual machines (VMs) inline, enabling operations to continue without downtime.

One of ioGuardian’s key benefits is its ability to tighten RPOs and RTOs. It achieves this through the use of VergeOS snapshots, which can be executed frequently based on the customer’s needs, ensuring more regular data protection and inline recovery. This approach enables ioGuardian to provide real-time recovery of missing data segments, ensuring VMs can continue their operations seamlessly without crashing or requiring a separate recovery process. These capabilities are included in VergeOS at no additional charge other than licensing the server used for ioGuardian.

Setting Up Real-time Recovery

An Instant Recovery Upgrade

The setup for ioGuardian involves configuring a dedicated server as the ioGuardian target, which can be an older, repurposed server or storage system capable of running VergeOS. It runs outside the production instance and represents a third copy of data beyond the protections built-in to the production VergeOS instance. Since it is also running VergeOS, it also provides global inline deduplication, so the storage capacity needed for the ioGuardian server is optimized, allowing for reduced data transfer and footprint. Additionally, placing an ioGuardian server on-premises and at a remote location can enhance data recovery efforts by providing access to data blocks from multiple sources if needed.

Comparing Instant Recovery to Real-time Recovery

While there are a lot of rapid recovery technologies on the market, instant recovery was the former state-of-the-art. The concept offered by several backup vendors aims to quickly re-instantiate a VM on a backup appliance. While this method can be effective, it typically requires downtime for the VM to restart on the backup appliance. It is also hosted on the backup appliance, which might not offer the same performance as the primary system to the point that even though recovery is “instant,” performance is so bad that IT can’t use it.

Moreover, instant recovery often involves manual intervention from IT staff due to limitations in how often entire environments are protected and how available the IT team is. The actual RTO could range between four to eight hours. Also, instant recovery requires another manual intervention for IT to move the VM back into the production environment eventually. This may also cause an outage while the movement occurs.

When the drives are replaced, instant recovery does not aid in restoring those drives. Recovery requires a manual and complete restoration of the impacted volumes. Even a RAID rebuild will likely not work, and if it does, it will be very time-consuming and extract a performance toll.

An Instant Recovery Upgrade

As an instant recovery upgrade, ioGuardian’s inline recovery method introduces potentially no downtime. It provides the missing data segments to VMs in real-time, bypassing the need for IT intervention and achieving an instant RTO with an RPO of minutes. Furthermore, VMs continue running from the primary production hardware, avoiding the performance drawbacks of running on a backup appliance. As a result, an outage to move the VM back to the production environment is eliminated. Lastly, when the failed drives are replaced, the ioGuardian server rebuilds the data on those drives automatically, avoiding further restoration or time-consuming RAID rebuilds.

Conclusion

The real-time and instant data recovery comparison highlights the advanced capabilities and benefits of inline recovery solutions like ioGuardian for VergeOS. IoGuardian sets a new data backup and recovery standard by providing real-time data recovery without downtime or manual IT intervention. As businesses rely heavily on their data, adopting innovative recovery solutions while keeping costs in check will ensure operational continuity and resilience in the face of data loss challenges.

To learn more, register for our upcoming webinar, “Can Your Hypervisor Do This? Real-Time and Inline Data Recovery” We spotlight VergeOS’s ioGuardian capabilities, challenging the status quo of hypervisor functionality. Learn what it would take and how much it would cost for other hypervisors to deliver similar capabilities. We will also demonstrate live how ioGuardian delivers missing data segments to virtual machines (VMs), maintaining continuous operations even during multiple simultaneous hardware failures.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

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overcome DR cost and complexity

IT professionals trying to implement disaster recovery (DR) plans that enable their organizations to survive, struggle to overcome DR cost and complexity. The problem is that most solutions don’t take a holistic approach. Instead, current solutions require IT to use a DR component for each tier of the data center infrastructure: storage, applications, and networking, which not only increases cost and complexity but lowers the likelihood that a recovery will be successful.

VergeOS’ holistic approach greatly simplifies DR to the extent that it “just works,” while lowering costs. In addition to unprecedented DR capabilities, VergeOS provides complete high availability and data protection. Learn in our upcoming live webinar and demonstration, “The Missing Fourth Tier of Convergence: High Availability, Data Protection, and Disaster Recovery.”

The DR Problem with Array-Based Replication

overcome DR cost and complexity

Storage systems are a primary focus of any DR solution. Replicating data from a primary site to a secondary site is table stakes for any enterprise solution, and most storage vendors provide such a capability with their products. However, including replication still requires IT to overcome DR cost and complexity issues and makes it very difficult for them to overcome DR cost and complexity.

Dedicated storage arrays, that include replication, often require the same or a very similar storage array in the DR site. As we discussed in our article “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage,” storage vendors already markup the cost of their solutions 5X to 10X the regular cost of hardware, and now, to protect their organizations from a disaster, IT must pay that markup twice.

Creating a separate disaster recovery process for the storage system creates complexity when executing recovery. Storage replication only replicates the data on that dedicated device. If the customer, as many do, has multiple storage systems from different vendors, they need a separate replication process for each system.

In addition, most customers do not place all their data on the storage area network (SAN) or the network-attached storage (NAS). Many customers at least boot their virtualized environments from local storage and many store critical aspects of the application on storage within those local servers. Also, array-based replication will not capture any network configurations and settings. Those need to be separately captured and applied at the disaster recovery site.

As a result, array-based replication, which is by far the most common means of complying with a disaster recovery requirement, is incomplete, complex, and expensive. It forces IT to manage a separate disaster recovery process for each storage system and maintain separate processes for the application tier and the network infrastructure.

The DR Problem with Hypervisor-Based Replication

To overcome DR cost and complexity of array-based replication, some solutions will replicate at the hypervisor, from hypervisor vendors like VMware and standalone third parties like Zerto, now owned by HPE. These solutions capture and replicate data from a virtual machine perspective. The likelihood of success increases if the organization stores all its data within the virtual machines. However, most organizations do not and have separate data storage silos. Hypervisor-based replication also enables replication to disparate storage hardware.

There are challenges to hypervisor-based replication. First and foremost is the cost. These solutions are dramatically more expensive than even array-based replication. The second challenge is that hypervisor-based replication often will not pick up unique storage settings at each location, so the storage infrastructure has to be correctly maintained. Finally, hypervisor-based replication cannot capture all the unique network configurations unless the network is software-defined.

As a result, when performing a disaster recovery test or recovering from a declared disaster, hypervisor-based replication takes significant amounts of time to apply last-minute updates to the DR site, which delays the speed at which the organization can recover from the disaster. Each last-minute step is also a potential point for human error, which can delay the recovery process even further.

Solve the DR Problem with VergeOS

overcome DR cost and complexity

VergeOS’ unique multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDC) provide a holistic disaster recovery solution where every aspect of the data center is captured and replicated in a single movement, enabling IT to overcome DR cost and complexity.

A VDC is an encapsulation of the entire data center, similar to how a virtual machine is an encapsulation of a physical server. A VDC contains all of the components of the data center: all the VMs, all the network settings, and all the storage settings. This encapsulation means IT can perform VM-like movement functions to the entire data center.

While there are many use cases for Virtual Data Centers, the most common is to implement them as part of a DR strategy. To establish a DR site, IT only needs to copy the VDC to their DR site and establish an asynchronous replication between the two. The remote VDC benefits from VergeOS always-on global inline deduplication. Multiple sites can replicate to a single disaster recovery site, and only data unique to the entire global footprint must be transmitted.

In the event of a disaster, the DR copy of the VDC is perfect, containing all the components and configuration settings of the original data center, even the network settings. The DR site can contain different server, storage, and network hardware than the primary, and everything will still function as expected because the VDC has abstracted everything from the physical hardware.

Every infrastructure component is securely stored at the DR site so that recovery occurs seamlessly without last-minute configuration updates. When IT needs to perform a DR test or recover from a real-life disaster, it “just works.”

IT just needs to make the VDC instance active and direct users to start logging into it. Most VergeOS customers report a dramatic reduction in the time and effort to perform their DR tests, and 100% of those impacted by an actual disaster have been able to execute a rapid, successful recovery. In short VergeIO customers have overcome DR cost and complexity.

Lowering Disaster Recovery Costs with VergeOS

Not only does VergeOS simplify disaster recovery, but it also lowers its costs. VergeOS is a single piece of software that integrates virtualization, storage, networking, as well as high availability, and disaster recovery into a cohesive operating environment. As a result, VergeOS includes all of the above functionality in the core software product at no additional charge. The cost savings are dramatic when comparing the cost of a multi-component disaster recovery solution to VergeOS’ holistic DR approach. Many customers report reducing their DR total cost of ownership (TCO) by 60% or more. When customers add the savings of eliminating double-marked-up storage costs and proprietary networking hardware, they can reduce their TCO by 80%.

Conclusion

IT professionals have long struggled to overcome DR cost and complexity. VergeOS offers a simplified and cost-effective DR solution integrated into the platform’s core instead of a never-ending series of expensive add-ons.

VergeOS integrates virtualization, storage, networking, high availability, and disaster recovery into a single software solution, eliminating the need for multiple components and significantly reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). VergeOS’s multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDC) streamline the process, capturing all data center components in one movement, ensuring seamless recovery.

In today’s unpredictable business landscape, VergeOS revolutionizes disaster recovery, making it efficient and affordable for organizations.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

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VergeIO, the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company, introduced a groundbreaking solution for ransomware protection – IOfortify. This latest innovation combines robust security; unlimited, unchangeable clones; and rapid, complete recovery to fortify data integrity and provide users with true peace of mind. – Julian Lee, President TechnoPlanet

Read more…

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