Blog written by Ted Curtin, Dell.
In September 2001, I was working for a company that sold network bandwidth to Internet Service Providers. Immediately after 9/11, we received numerous inquiries from corporations looking for disaster recovery (DR) solutions. I was surprised when none of these companies moved forward with our carefully crafted proposals. Given all the potential risks, why weren’t they acting to protect their data?
Twelve years later, I have a better understanding of these customers’ reluctance to put a DR plan in place. In addition to the network costs that I was proposing, each customer needed to consider the costs of building a second site, with power and technical support. The second site also needed switching and storage equipment, identical or at least very similar to the primary site. This was a huge and costly undertaking, at any scale.
How things have changed. Today, customers can implement a disaster recovery solution at a fraction of the cost of a 2001 configuration. A new Dell white paper, Rethinking disaster recovery in a virtual worldfocuses on key technologies that enable cost-effective DR, using some Dell products as examples.
Key technologies discussed include:
Blades
Blade servers are an attractive alternative to rack servers in DR configurations even though the upfront cost for blades may be higher. The scale of blade technology justifies the investment, and blades are easy to manage, a significant consideration for sites that may not have dedicated technical personnel.
PowerEdge VRTX
PowerEdge VRTX is a “data center in a box” solution that includes high-performance server nodes, integrated storage, VMware integration, and simplified networking. VRTX is easily managed, doesn’t require special power or cooling, and has a remarkably small footprint.
Did someone mention virtualization?
In the past, many organizations chose to keep large numbers of applications unprotected because of the high cost of protecting physical machines. Virtualization eliminates the need to have a 1:1 server relationship, allowing administrators to economically protect all of their applications.
Storage systems aren’t just for storage
Dell storage solutions are integrated with leading virtualization platforms to help eliminate much of the tedious but critical work needed to facilitate protection and recovery. In the event of an outage, administrators can easily activate recovery for multiple virtual servers from a remote site.
Get thee to an AppAssure demo
Dell AppAssure data protection software provides revolutionary DR capabilities. With WAN-optimized deduplication, AppAssure can reduce bandwidth requirements by 80 percent. AppAssure’s Universal Recovery™ eliminates the need to restore data and applications to identical machines. Administrators can now perform cross-platform recoveries and bare metal restores to dissimilar hardware.
In an era where threats are omnipresent it’s imperative that organizations have a comprehensive plan for backup and recovery. The Dell whitepaper, Rethinking disaster recovery in a virtual world , is intended to help customers choose the appropriate approach and the best technology for a cost effective disaster recovery plan.