Vizioncore and VMware simplify disaster recovery
By Alex Barrett, News Director
11 Jul 2007 | ServerVirtualization.com
VMware backup and recovery specialist Vizioncore of Buffalo Grove, Ill., has put together a bundle comprising its software plus VMware virtualization. Together, they will enable small and midsized businesses (SMBs) to improve their disaster recovery (DR) posture.
“If they only have a handful of servers, SMBs don’t see the same consolidation benefits from virtualization as larger companies,” said Chris Akerberg, Vizioncore vice president of global sales and marketing. “But one thing they do lack is a solid, repeatable DR strategy.”
By virtualizing their mission-critical systems, then backing them up or replicating them with Vizioncore tools, Akerberg said SMBs can get servers back online quickly without using identical hardware at a remote location or expensive network storage-based replication software.
Vizioncore’s bundle is called Virtual Disaster Recovery (VDR) for SMBs and consists of VMware Infrastructure 3 Starter Edition, which includes the ESX hypervisor and one year of VMware Gold Support as well as Vizioncore’s own esxEssentials. That software, in turn, consists of the following:
* Vizioncore esxRanger Professional: enables scheduled hot backup and recovery of entire VMware virtual machine images;
* Vizioncore esxReplicator: for real-time replication of virtual machines performed within the VMware service console; and
* Vizioncore esxCharter: a VMware ESX real-time and historical monitoring tool.
Akerberg expects that Vizioncore’s channel partners will work with SMBs to identify and virtualize their most mission-critical servers. Once the servers have been virtualized, IT administrators can use esxRanger to schedule an image-level backup of the virtual machine, which in the event of a failure or corruption can be brought up quickly on another ESX host.
For IT shops with more stringent recovery time objectives (RTOs), Vizioncore recommends using esxReplicator to make a real-time continuous copy of a virtual machine to a remote ESX host, or “destination.” This ESX host, Akerberg noted, doesn’t necessarily have to belong to the end customer; “the destination could be at our channel partners’ data center,” he said. “That way our resellers could generate some service revenue.”
Of course, even if you replicate, you should still use esxRanger to perform regular backups, Akerberg cautioned, so that you have a known good point to return to in the event of a data corruption.
The inclusion of esxCharter in the VDR-for-SMBs bundle, meanwhile, “gives SMBs an easy-to-use diagnostic tool to see what’s going on in their environment.”
VDR for SMBs is available immediately from Vizioncore channel partners. With a starting price of $2,275, it “represents a huge value for Vizioncore customers,” Akerberg said. Vizioncore would typically charge about $1,800 for esxEssentials on two CPUs. But here, esxEssentials is being offered for about $600.
P2V disaster recovery on the way
Coming soon, Akerberg said, Vizioncore will offer a disaster recovery solution to customers that want to protect nonvirtualized servers. Working with a third-party technology partner, Vizioncore will integrate an image-level backup tool for physical machines into the esxRanger interface. That capability will be available in the next release of the product, which is scheduled for this August.
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Posted by sean shea 
Posted by sean shea 
Posted by sean shea 