Replication, Business Continuity and Restoration with Cloud Economics

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1 Replication, Business Continuity and Restoration with Cloud Economics How HotLink DR Express Provides VMware Disaster Recovery that Won t Break the Bank Solution 2012 Neovise, LLC. All Assessment Rights Reserved. Published September 12, 2013

Recovery that Won t Break the Bank Solution 2012 Neovise,

2 Background Businesses need a cost effective way to quickly and reliably recover workloads, letting them maintain business continuity when inevitable failures happen. Typical methods, often involving set-up and maintenance of a separate disaster recovery (DR) site are complex, expensive and risky. Cloud-based DR and business continuity (BC) solutions have the potential to overcome the challenges of traditional BC/DR offerings. Yet most don t leverage cloud economics efficiently or deliver the control IT needs to effectively maintain their recovery environments. The BC/DR Challenge Too many IT organizations are using inadequate BC/DR solutions and many others are overspending to get the protection they need. Context: The cost and complexity of traditional BC/DR solutions prevent many important applications from getting the right level of protection. Failures happen. It doesn t take a relatively rare earthquake or a tornado to disrupt IT operations. Hardware failures, power outages and human error often drive the need to implement DR plans. Hot/warm site recovery is expensive and usually reserved for critical workloads only. These standby sites also require the same level of maintenance and identical equipment as your primary environment. Simple backup and restore operations may be cost effective but fail to deliver adequate recovery point objectives (RPO) or recovery time objectives (RTO) for business-critical applications. Failure to properly restore a production environment from backup is all too common. Impact: Applications may fail to be restored, or recovery may take longer than expected, resulting in a loss of business continuity, lost revenue, and missed opportunities. Important data may be unavailable to restore, or recovery points might be inadequate, resulting in lost progress and loss of business continuity as IT attempts to put the pieces back together Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

Cloud-based DR and business continuity (BC) solutions have the potential to overcome the challenges of traditional BC/DR offerings.

3 Businesses may overspend on extra infrastructure as a way of ensuring a faster recovery. However, even though the equipment is rarely used, it still must be maintained, resulting in additional spending. Solution HotLink DR Express is a BC/DR solution that leverages the economics of cloud computing to deliver effective and affordable replication and restoration. DR Express operates as an extension of VMware vcenter, allowing IT staff to manage DR directly from the vcenter console. Capabilities: Users can easily pick and choose the VMs they want to protect, and configure RPOs for each. All changes are automatically synchronized to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) as they occur. When a disaster or failure happens, VMs can be recovered in minutes and are deployed using AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances provisioned from vcenter. AWS recovered VMs are fully manageable with VMware vcenter using the same methods as on-premises vsphere VMs. Migrating VMs back on-premises is as easy as choosing a restore point from vcenter, anywhere from the original point of protection to the current state of your AWS VMs. Benefits: HotLink DR Express greatly improves costs, letting businesses afford protection for all their VMs, not just mission critical workloads. Ongoing, block-level replication of VM changes means businesses can choose exactly which point they want to recover from. The on-demand provisioning of AWS EC2 instances lets businesses achieve superior RTOs, with recovery in minutes, while reducing costs. Integration with vcenter allows IT to manage their DR site alongside their on-premises data center from a single seamless view. Solution Assessment + DR Express is one of the only solutions to leverage an economic pricing model made possible by cloud computing Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 2

Solution HotLink DR Express is a BC/DR solution that leverages the economics of cloud computing to deliver effective and affordable replication and restoration.

4 + HotLink has strong integration with VMware vcenter and highly automated site set-up with AWS. + Recovery testing is integrated with the offering and easy to perform, minimizing the possibility of recovery failures. - DR Express currently only supports AWS data centers as recovery locations. Fortunately, AWS has many advantages including cost, variety of data center locations, etc. making it a great choice for nearly any customer. Recommendations: Businesses facing the challenge of finding an affordable BC/DR solution that delivers the right amount of protection should consider HotLink DR Express as a way to effectively manage, back up and restore their VMs. IT organizations having trouble managing their recovery site because of complexity and compatibility issues should consider a solution, such as DR Express, that allows users to manage their backup environment and on-premises environment from a single portal. VMware vcenter shops should now consider cloud-based BC/DR a viable option and put HotLink DR Express on their short list. Summary: A disaster can happen at any time, and more often than not it comes in the form of hardware failure. To meet this challenge, businesses need a disaster recovery solution that gives them complete protection and not just for mission critical workloads. Unfortunately most recovery solutions have yet to leverage cloud economics effectively. DR Express from HotLink leverages the efficiency, flexibility and agility of cloud computing and addresses the need for an affordable, effective and easy-to-use BC/DR solution. Now IT staff can easily monitor, test and manage their disaster recovery site alongside their on-premises environment in vcenter, and have complete confidence in a successful recovery once disaster strikes Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Page 3

Fortunately, AWS has many advantages including cost, variety of data center locations, etc. making it a great choice for nearly any customer.

5 About Neovise Based on independent research and analysis, Neovise delivers essential knowledge and guidance to cloud-related technology vendors, service providers and systems integrators, as well as business and IT organizations that purchase and use cloud-related services and technology. Our offerings include research, advisory and collateral development services that help our customers and their customers make optimal decisions and formulate winning strategies. Research. Analyze. Neovise. For more information, visit Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Our offerings include research, advisory and collateral development services that help our customers and their customers make optimal decisions

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