Prepare for a virtual disaster
- TAGS:Continuity Software, disaster recovery, virtual machines, VMware
- IT TOPICS:Applications, Data Center, Management
As you rush to create your virtualized data center, don't forget your disaster recovery plans. Do your failover systems have the same configuration settings as the virtual servers in your production environment?
Avi Stone, director of marketing for Continuity Software Inc. in New York, doubts it. Of course, Continuity sells disaster recovery tools, so you'd expect he'd be doubtful. But he does have a good point. That is, disaster recovery sites need near perfectly identical systems and configurations as your production data center. If not, should your main operations go down, your backup systems may not work right.
With traditional application servers, that can be trouble enough. But with many virtual machines running on a single physical device, "it can affect many more servers," Stone says.
By the end of June Continuity will begin shipping Recover Guard 3.0. The update includes support for servers running VMware. That means the software will be able to discover configuration gaps between your virtual production world and your very real backup data center before disaster strikes.
Also, Version 3.0 now works with trouble-ticket systems from BMC and Hewlett-Packard, so the problems it uncovers can be reported through established IT channels. In addition, the update includes integration with your configuration management database.
Pricing starts around $2,000 per server.
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