Are you Prepared for Disaster?

Disaster Recovery has never been easier to manage than it is right now.  Virtualization has given engineers a tremendous tool to allow us to almost effortlessly move workloads between datacenters.  Now that we’re virtualizing workloads, we’re now capable of standing up exact copies of our servers in two offices and have them up and running in very short RTOs.

In the past year we’ve seen two major storms hit the East Coast causing severe power outages as well as making commutes difficult or impossible for users to get to work.  Thanks to the cloud we have many more mobile users than we used to and even if they’re not considered mobile, their servers may not be located in their office.  Cloud presents some great options for disaster recovery that should be taken advantage of, no matter what your geographic location.  If you’re in a SMB and you don’t have a DR plan, GET ONE NOW!

You don’t have to use old tape backups anymore.  VMware is leveraging the inherent abilities that cloud provides to allow you to do quick migrations of mission critical servers.  VMware Site Recovery Manager is a favorite tool of mine and not only allows you to build most of your DR plan in it, but test it during production hours without affecting your business.

VMware vCloud Connector now allows you to join multiple clouds together.  If you have a main office on the East coast, setup a second private cloud on the West coast.  If you’re worried about a big storm, move the workloads and keep on humming.  What about a smaller SMB that can’t afford to have a second office?  Try a public cloud provider such as HPcloud, Amazon, or even vcloud.vmware.com (beta).  You can get a second network setup relatively cheap and only pay for what you’re using.  This will allow you to get your DR Site up and running for a minimal of cost.

How much will it really cost you if you have a disaster and the business can’t function for a prolonged period of time?