Disaster Recovery on the Cheap
One of the key selling points to server virtualization is disaster recovery. But, how many of us have actually implemented a virtualization-centric DR solution that isn't a backup or restore? One of the biggest issues to implementing virtualization-centric DR is that there is usually a large upfront cost for software and usually corresponding hardware. VizionCore's
vConverter has a feature that is out to change all of that.
vConverter is not your standard P2V tool, but really a menu of rich features that are available to do as much or as little as you wish. One feature that I want to focus on is the Incremental Replication for Disaster Recovery for a selected system. Within vConverter, this is called Continuous Protection conversion, and works to convert a system and then keep it up to date. The best part is that you can do it on the cheap -- vConverter's Continuous Protection feature is available for $299 per protected system.
vConverter's Continuous Protection works to give you DR by selecting a system -- physical or virtual -- and selecting a virtual destination. vConverter also fits many environments by supporting multiple hypervisors. Currently Microsoft, VMware, Virtual Iron, and Xen Server platforms are supported. Beyond the great price and broad hypervisor support, vConverter's Continuous Protection feature is easy to set up.
Continuous Protection has a customizable update rate, available in days, hours or minutes. Depending on the workload, you may not want this interval too tight. The network traffic between the vConverter server agent and the DR virtual machine is optimized to only copy over changes. It is worth noting vConverter doesn't provide a managed failover to the protected virtual machine. Otherwise, this is a solid use of P2V and V2V conversion technologies adding extra functionality with little effort and cost.
Managed DR on the cheap! Send me your comments and let me know what you think of vConverter.
(Disclaimer: I have no financial relationship with Vizioncore. What you're getting here is my unbiased opinion of the product.)
Posted by Rick Vanover on 02/03/2009 at 12:47 PM