SunGard Hybrid Recovery Services
Amidst the all the virtualization and cloud hoopla, most evolving datacenters still support a wide variety virtual and physical machines, which includes a combination of mainframes, Windows servers, Linux/Unix systems and virtual machines. This can get tricky when you are trying to manage a recovery site and find out it is necessary to buy a very expensive new set of application software licenses for your secondary location.
This is the kind of situation that SunGard Availability Services likes to take on. They're used to working with very large customers, and good at finding solutions for them. In this case of recovering hybrid environments, the top three challenges they list are:
- Recreating a multi-layer, multi-platform stack for each mission-critical app
- Recovering mission-critical apps within the time requirements needed to avoid negative consequences to the RTO
- Avoiding huge capital outlays on CapEx for building a secondary recovery site, and on OpEx for maintaining the site
SunGard also has a tight list of assets required to enable hybrid recoveries. You need:
- The right technologies for each platform and OS at a secondary site
- A well-documented DR playbook containing all recovery processes
- A multi-disciplinary team skilled in VMware, Oracle, Windows, storage technologies, etc. that can work from the playbook
- Change management processes in place so all changes in production configurations make their way into the recovery environment
If you lack these assets, SunGard will be happy to step in with its SunGard Site Recovery Manager-as-a-Service once it is introduced this fall. According to the company, "This new offering delivers VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager as a service to provide vSphere replication of storage-based replication of apps to a secondary SunGard site." The company also offers SunGard Recover2Cloud, which it calls "a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) offering that delivers cloud-based managed recovery services backed by guaranteed service levels."
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 08/20/2012 at 12:48 PM