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EMC Introduces Business Continuity Services Suite for VMware Environments

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EMC today announced a full range of new consulting, implementation, education and managed services that leverage EMC’s expertise in virtualization and business continuity. EMC Global Services can effectively integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager into customers’ EMC business continuity environments to automate recovery of virtual environments.

Business continuity is a critical requirement in virtualized data centers as more mission-critical applications are virtualized. As a top-tier member of the VMware Partner Network with hundreds of VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs), and years of business continuity experience, EMC Global Services has the deep expertise to help customers address their availability and recovery challenges for virtual environments. EMC’s end-to-end solutions methodology applies best practices from both enterprise business continuity and virtualization disciplines to provide cost-effective recovery strategies for VMware environments. This approach leverages integration of EMC’s full portfolio of replication technology with the automation capabilities of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to provide a robust solution that mitigates risk. The following new EMC services help customers design and implement a consistent recovery strategy for x86 virtualized environments across the enterprise:

  • EMC Consulting services for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager automate and provide a recovery strategy for virtualized infrastructures to integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery manager into enterprise business continuity programs.
  • EMC Design and Implementation for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager delivers a customized design and complete integration of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager with customers’ existing business continuity plans.
  • EMC Education Services for VMware environments offers training modules including, VMware Integration with EMC Storage and Replication Technologies training for both EMC Symmetrix(R) and EMC CLARiiON(R), and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, to be proficient in installing, configuring, and operating VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, as well as the testing of EMC disaster recovery plans.
  • EMC Residency Services for VMware environments provide the infrastructure management resources and expertise to manage the day-to-day operations of the virtual infrastructure.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, when deployed in conjunction with EMC’s industry-leading portfolio of replication software including EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility), EMC Celerra Replicator, EMC MirrorView and EMC RecoverPoint, enables customers to rapidly and efficiently bring their virtualized servers and mission-critical information online at a secondary site.

Customers who work with EMC Velocity2 Authorized Services Network (ASN) partners will also be able to accelerate the business benefits of integrating their EMC business continuity environments with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Velocity2 ASN partners are trained, certified and field tested to provide value-add services in VMware environments, and channel partners who also VMware partner can further provide value to customers through their deep technical knowledge of EMC and VMware products.

EMC Global Services provides the strategic guidance and technology expertise organizations need to address their business and information infrastructure challenges and derive the maximum value from their information assets and investments. With over 13,000 professional- and support-service experts worldwide, plus a global network of alliances and partners, EMC Global Services leverages proven methodologies, industry best practices, experience and a knowledge base derived from EMC’s 30-year information-centric heritage to help customers reduce risk, lower costs and speed time to value. .

SteelEye Introduces Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster

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SteelEye Technology, provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for multi-vendor IT infrastructures, today announced SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster at Storage Expo 2008 in London. This solution extends SteelEye’s leading business continuity technology for Linux environments by enabling organizations with shared-storage Linux clusters within a data center to leverage another off-site replicated node for disaster recovery. The unique product offering is ideal for Linux users looking to cost-effectively extend existing high-availability capabilities as well as for those instituting first-time high-availability clustering and disaster recovery technologies.

As the burden of enterprise data grows, heightened emphasis is placed on how to manage, store and, most importantly, secure that data. By adding additional node for disaster recovery, SteelEye is providing data protection whether the server is local or on another continent. It provides additional protection for unforeseen events as well as planned downtime, such as data center moves.

IDC’s recently published Availability and Clustering Software (ACS) forecast shows that ACS products supporting Linux and open-source environments are carving out a significant presence in this worldwide market–with an expected doubling of revenue-based market share from 9.1% of all ACS revenue in 2007 to 18.1%, by 2012.

Specifically, SteelEye Protection Suite for Linux Multi-Site Cluster offers outstanding robustness and flexibility in its optimized host-based data replication technology. It allows for the inclusion of a remote system as part of a local shared storage cluster, extending disaster recovery protection to all file systems as if they are part of a classic shared storage cluster. Similarly, existing shared storage clusters can be enhanced with disaster recovery protection. Armed with SteelEye’s trademark flexibility, the product also integrates easily and automatically with heterogeneous hardware and software environments as well as existing SteelEye product offerings.

Compellent Technologies Introduces Live Volume for Business Continuity Automation

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Compellent Technologies today announced it will provide continuous, coordinated access to all data stored on Compellent SANs between remote locations with a new automated business continuity feature, Live Volume.

Live Volume will allow enterprises to manage their disparate storage sites around the world as one virtual data center. As customers move applications from one physical or virtual server to another for maintenance, local site issues or disaster recovery, Live Volume will enable IT managers to proactively and automatically migrate the associated storage volumes. By not requiring investments in third-party tools or mirroring of storage resources, Compellent‘s live transfer of data will make it easier and cost-effective to manage all resources regardless of the physical location.

Based on Compellent‘s Dynamic Block Architecture, Live Volume is designed to eliminate downtime for enterprises that need to migrate servers and storage for disaster recovery or onsite maintenance. Each data volume will be present and automatically available on Compellent SANs at either site at all times.

Compellent‘s Live Volume integrates with the industry‘s leading virtual server platforms, enabling servers to share centralized storage resources regardless of the actual location or OS virtualization platform. The new virtual storage technology will complement server virtualization to help further reduce costs and simplify data management.

Compellent Storage Center with SSD is currently being evaluated by select beta customers. Compellent plans to offer SSD to all markets in Q1 and Live Volume in Q2 of 2009 exclusively through the company‘s growing international network of channel partners. Additional product information and pricing details will be announced at launch.

SteelEye Brings Disaster Recovery Solution to Hyper-V

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SteelEye Technology (previous coverage), a provider of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for multi-vendor IT infrastructures, recently announced SteelEye DataKeeper support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

DataKeeper is a highly optimized data replication solution for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The product is sold in two versions: DataKeeper delivers data replication services as an extension to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 while DataKeeper Cluster Edition further extends the capabilities of Windows Server Failover Clustering. Both editions support real-time replication of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines between physical servers across either LAN or WAN connections.

By keeping a running Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine in sync with a standby VM in an alternate location, DataKeeper enables disaster recovery without the data loss typically associated with traditional backup and restore technology. Real-time continuous replication of active Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VMs helps ensure that in the event of a disaster, the standby server can be activated with minimal to no data loss.

DataKeeper Cluster Edition allows administrators to build “shared-nothing” and geographically dispersed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters. By eliminating the requirement for shared storage, the administrator can protect against both planned and unplanned downtime of servers and storage. The use of DataKeeper in tandem with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VMs allows for non-disruptive disaster recovery testing. By simply accessing the replicated VMs in the disaster recovery site, the administrator can segment a virtual network separate from the production network and start the replicated VMs for disaster recovery testing. Complete disaster recovery testing can be performed without impacting the production site at all.

Exclusive Video: VMware In A Nutshell, By Product Marketing Manager John Gilmartin

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So what’s VMware all about now on a technology level, now that their stock went tumbling and their CEO has been replaced? John Gilmartin, Group Manager, Product Marketing at VMware answered our questions on virtualization in general and their strategy and product portfolio in particular.

After defining virtualization and virtual machines, John dives deeper into what drives prospective virtualization customers (infrastructure consolidation, high availability, business continuity, disaster recovery?). He also shares more on their recently announced VMsafe initiative, which allows trusted partners to ‘peak’ into a Virtual Machine and identify threats from the outside of the operating systems and the applications they try to protect.

John underlines that VMware is offering features far beyond the basic data center consolidation needs; such as life cycle management, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), automated provisioning, fail over, disaster recovery and optimize the management tasks for a virtual infrastructure.

All this is part of VMware’s from-desktop-to-datacenter portfolio and makes VMware feel confident and well positioned to compete with Hyper-V from Microsoft.