AVLOR SERVER CLOUD RECOVERY WHITE PAPER
1 Table of Contents Abstract... 2 1. Introduction... 3 2. Server Cloud Recovery... 3 3. Amazon AWS Cloud... 4 a. What it is... 4 b. Why Use AWS?... 5 4. Difficulties in setting up a Disaster Recovery Plan... 5 5. Cloud Challenges... 5 6. Solution: Avlor s Online Server Cloud Recovery... 6 7. How does the solution works?... 6 8. Storage... 9 9. Total Security... 9 9.1. Password... 9 9.2 Data Encryption... 9 10. Benefits... 10 11. FAQ s... 11 a. General FAQ s... 11 b. Technical FAQ s... 11 12. Pricing... 13 13. Conclusion... 14 References... 14 List of Figures Figure 1: Working of the solution... 8
2 Abstract This paper describes the new Online Server Cloud Recovery Solution from Avlor. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of Avlor s NEW Online Solution that protects your real-time business Data, Applications and Servers to the Amazon Web Services cloud for Production, Backup and Disaster Recovery. The automated online service of Avlor helps to set up disaster recovery of servers to Amazon AWS with just seconds. The major advantage of this solution is that, it is based on the leading bare metal disk imaging technology with incremental snapshots and high security, which is tightly integrated with the Amazon AWS cloud.
3 1. Introduction The businesses require an effective Disaster Recovery plan to prevent data loss and to assure the continuity of the business. The data loss may occur due to several reasons, such as human errors, computer virus, malfunctioning of hardware, software corruption and natural disasters, which may bring huge loss to the business. These are called disasters, since they create negative impacts on the continuity of the business. When such disaster strikes, administrators scramble to recover servers quickly; and replicating bare metal servers on a second site is prohibitively expensive and cost thousands of dollars. Thus, the cloud can be used for hosting live production of servers and also to test new software hot fixes, patches and upgrades with an exact copy of a server on the virtual cloud. Finally, the cloud can be used for backup and act as a recovery for your production servers. Amazon Web Services offers a complete set of infrastructure and application services to run everything in the cloud. However, there are some challenges in exactly copying your on premise server (including OS, Apps and Data) without taking offline existing production servers and requiring continuous server snapshots. To solve these challenges, Avlor s Online Server Cloud Disaster Recovery Solution is developed to save your mission critical servers from critical data loss. Avlor s Server Cloud Recovery Solution assists in moving bare metal existing virtual and physical servers from on premise or anywhere into the AWS cloud. 2. Server Cloud Recovery Disaster Backup & Recovery A Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is required to resume normal, critical business functions after a hardware or software crash or a disaster caused by human error.
4 Disaster Recovery Plans should be prepared and must be incorporated into the organization's disaster recovery plan. Companies must update and practice their plan if they want to minimize their recovery time after a disaster. a. Testing for Product Deployment Test new software hot fixes, patches and upgrades with an exact copy of your server which is available as a virtual server in the Amazon AWS cloud. b. Recovery Time Objective & Recovery Point Objective Recovery time objective (RTO) is the duration of time and service level to which business processes or business applications must be restored after a disaster. Recovery point objective (RPO) is the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. A business typically decides on an acceptable RTO and RPO assessed by considering many factors such as the loss of business and damage to its reputation due to downtime and the lack of systems availability. Research shows that companies that face data loss often shutdown if they are unable to recover. 3. Amazon AWS Cloud a. What it is Amazon Web Services offers infrastructure and application services that enable you to run virtually everything in the cloud: from enterprise application to social apps. Amazon Web Services provides, scalable, low-cost infrastructure in the cloud in the U.S., Europe, Brazil, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. One of the key benefits is the opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs.
5 b. Why Use AWS? The Amazon Web Services can be used for its high security features, flexibility, low cost, elasticity, etc. the following are the major reasons for choosing the Amazon Web Services for various migration and backup services. Pay-as-you-go: AWS offers pay-as-you-go pricing with no up-front expenses or long-term commitments. Elasticity: AWS allows you to deploy new applications, scale up and scale down instantly based on demand. Flexible: AWS is a programming language and an operating system agnostic platform. You can choose the services you use, one or several, and choose how you use them. Secure: AWS is a secure, durable technology platforms, which includes industryrecognized audits and certifications. Cost Savings: No up-front hardware, software costs and reduces on-going IT expenses. 4. Difficulties in setting up a Disaster Recovery Plan Some of the difficulties in setting up a disaster recovery plan include: Re-constructing on premise server's OS, application stacks & data onto new cloud servers. Taking production servers offline Requiring continuous server snapshots before switch-over offline 5. Cloud Challenges Difficulty in exactly re-constructing existing on premise operating system of the server, application stacks & data onto new cloud servers.
6 Cannot take offline existing production servers & need continuous server snapshots before switch-over Avlor s automated online service is the solution to overcome the above difficulties and challenges. This solution sets up disaster recovery of servers to Amazon cloud in just seconds, based on leading bare metal disk imaging technology with incremental snapshots & high security. 6. Solution: Avlor s Online Server Cloud Recovery Avlor s Online Server Cloud Disaster Recovery solution offers an easy setup and backup of your servers to AWS Cloud with no downtime. Avlor s online backup and recovery software automatically creates the backup images of your existing virtual and physical servers from anywhere into Amazon AWS cloud infrastructure. Multiple point-in-time snapshots are available to choose from when deciding the switch-over point. The solution allows you to meet our recovery point and time objectives. The major advantage of this solution is that it is based on the leading bare metal disk imaging technology with incremental snapshots, high security and tightly integrated with the Amazon AWS cloud. This solution offers near continuous availability of server images with its incremental bare metal backup technology. Server images are made available online through the online portal. The working of the solution is as follows. 7. How does the solution works? Avlor s automated online service works simple and fast. It provides full-server disaster recovery to the Amazon AWS cloud in just seconds. You can protect your Windows Servers with automated bare metal backups with ready-to-launch virtual servers in the AWS Cloud. The Disaster Recovery of your servers starts in just a few simple steps. Step 1: Sign up
7 Register to get started with the full trial of Avlor s Cloud Recovery Application. Login to our Application if you have already registered with Avlor. Step 2. Complete AWS Setup Download and use our AWS S3 script to setup and configure your Amazon account to work with Avlor Server Cloud Recovery. Step 3. Use Our Server Install Wizard Download and Install Server Cloud disaster recovery Agent on your local servers. You can download and get started here: www.avlor.com Launch the Disaster Recovery Agent to start cloud recovery of your mission critical servers. This Agent sends the backup images of your servers to your AWS S3 storage account. These images are later converted into virtual servers. You can choose the Frequency of the incremental backups of your servers to hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. Step 4. Launch Virtual Servers Launch the virtual servers via the Avlor s server recovery portal in single click. The virtual servers (EC2 Instances) are fully encrypted in the secure Amazon cloud. Step 5. Monitor Server Reports Monitor your DR process from the reports generated through our application.
8 Figure 1: Working of the solution The Server Cloud Recovery Agent runs on the server and sends near continuous server images with incremental bare metal disk backup technology. The server images are stored locally as well as in your AWS storage account. These images are converted to virtual servers, which can be launched in just single click.
9 You can assign a nickname to your server being backed up. Each backup job is called a backup set and you can give it a nickname. You can select the frequency between consecutive restore points. You can also select the volume you would like and backup. 8. Storage The backup images are stored in your Amazon S3 buckets. You can also choose a local recovery option to store the backup images of your servers locally. Storage space is required to store your images locally before it is sent to the Amazon cloud storage. You can select any folder with required storage space, where the backup image files can be stored. You can also select a mapped network storage volume or external USB hard drive to store your server images. 9. Total Security Avlor s online disaster recovery solution provides rock solid security with AES-256 bit encryption. Online services run on the highly secured Amazon AWS cloud. 9.1. Password Our password security practices have been modeled after banking sector practices and encrypted before being stored in the database. This ensures that only you have access to your business data. 9.2 Data Encryption This procedure is also used extensively in information security applications like digital signatures, authentication of financial and banking transactions, online accounts, etc. It ensures that the password used for encrypting the information only can decrypt the data.
10 10. Benefits Multiple point in time restore images No professional service cost No investment Physical or virtual servers No up-front hardware, software costs Reduced IT expenses Unlimited Storage Capacity Zero or limited Maintenance Single click Pay-as-per-use Free Support Server Images Storage Usage Reports No need to manually copy data Simple easy backup of servers Automated bare metal backup technology Ability to choose volumes to be migrated Simple Administrative Console Automatic Incremental Migration, backup and Disaster Recovery Central Dashboard with guided setup
11 11. FAQ s a. General FAQ s What is Amazon AWS and why should I use it? Amazon Web Services offers complete application services and infrastructure that help you to run virtually anything in the Cloud. Benefits are many including replacing upfront expenses with lower costs. What is server migration to AWS and why should I use it? Server migration to AWS is simple online fully automated bare metal migration of a complete server including OS, Apps and data. What is disaster recovery to AWS and why should I use it? Disaster recovery allows you to backup server images to AWS storage and recover quickly, from any disaster, whatever be the cause. What are the challenges I will face in manual migration and disaster recovery to AWS? Difficulty in exactly re-constructing existing on premise server's OS, application stacks & data onto new cloud servers. What is an Amazon AWS account number and how do I get the same? An Amazon AWS account number is obtained by logging into your Amazon account at http://aws.amazon.com/console/ and clicking on My Account. You will find the account number on the top right hand side after you successfully login. b. Technical FAQ s How long does it take to import a virtual machine?
12 The time depends on the size of the disk image and the network connection speed. A 10 GB Windows Server image takes 2 hours to import over a 10 Mbps network connection. What software licenses can I bring to the Windows environment? Please check the licensing terms of your software vendor to determine if your existing licenses are authorized for use in Amazon EC2. License mobility via software assurance, please refer to http://aws.amazon.com/windows/mslicensemobility/ If it is for testing purpose only, you can use your MSDN licenses ORACLE : BYOL (bring your own license) New license keys What are incremental snapshots? Incremental snapshots capture only the changes at discrete points in time thus saving you storage space. How can I test for Product Deployment? You can test new software hot fixes, patches and upgrades with an exact copy of your server which is available as an EC2 instance. What operating systems are supported? The Operating Systems that are supported are Microsoft Servers 2008, 2008 R2 and Microsoft Servers 2003 Do you support both physical server systems and virtual servers? Yes we support both physical server systems and virtual servers.
13 Can I migrate only from on premise or any cloud? Yes, you can migrate both from the on premise or any cloud What virtual machine file formats are supported? Virtual machine file formats that are supported are vhd and vmdk Do I need to stop Windows server (physical or virtual) while backing up or migrating using your solution? No, you do not need to stop your Windows server (physical or virtual) while backing up or migrating. Do you support the migration of a windows server which is Hyper-V or VMware host for vm's running on it? No we do not support the migration of a windows server which is Hyper-V or VMware host for VM's running on it. Other requirements: 1) System time should be the accurate with the current time. 2) Before starting the migration, RDP must be enabled on the server to be migrated. 3) All volumes on the server should have a volume letter assigned (except the system reserved). 4) The only version supported for Server 2003 is R2 12. Pricing Pay only for what is currently used unlike our competitors fixed plans. Lowest price guaranteed.
14 13. Conclusion The above paper has discussed Avlor s automated service that performs full Server Disaster Recovery Solution to the AWS Cloud in just seconds with high security. This solution instantly recovers your data from several disasters as discussed in the above sections. Thus, Avlor s automated online service is your best choice to set up disaster recovery of servers. References http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vmimport/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/?preview=true#what_is_vm_import_export http://d36cz9buwru1tt.cloudfront.net/aws_disaster_recovery.pdf