VMware has moved on from a company that provides server consildation to a  company providing a range of data centre solutions.

As VMware’s products suite has developed, we have started to come across misconceptions about certain products, what they can do, and how much they cost. A good example of this is Site Recovery Manager.

To help remove some of the misconceptions we have outlined below some of the issues around this product.

Do we need to deploy SRM to protect all our applications?

NO, Site Recover Manager (SRM) is an option from VMware to remove the SAN as the single point of failure for a VMware esxi deployment.

In most organisations there are usually only a few applications that need as close to 100% uptime as possible. The rest of the applications can normally be unavailable for a certain amount of time and in most cases this is a lot longer than the fix time on the SAN warrantee/ support contract.

Do we need a 2^nd office to host the hardware including 2^nd SAN if we purchase SRM?

No,  any deployment of SRM will remove the SAN as a single point of failure for the chosen applications that are deemed mission critical.

We have been told that the SAN and servers need to be the same at both sites, is this true?

No,  in most cases servers that have been made redundant by the server consolidation project can be redeployed to work with SRM. The SAN can also be different and only needs to be capable of ensuring that the mission critical applications work.

Can we increase the number of protected applications?

VMware Site Recovery Manager is licensed in packs of twenty five virtual machines.

If additional applications need protecting or SRM is used as part of a disaster recovery/ business continuity plan then additional licensing can be purchased as required.  By working in this way VMware have reduced the cost of entry to a core product that can be upgraded to meet the changing business requirements.

Is having a redundant SAN a waste of money?

The  secondary SAN does not need to be the same specification as the primary SAN and will be less expensive .  In many cases this will be a re-provisioned  SAN that is still capable of running tier one applications.

It is also possible to have both SAN’s active and sharing the workload depending on the design and your business requirements.

What else should be considered?

• The over selling and sizing of SAN’s is a major problem
• What applications need this level of high availability and protection?
• Would either of the SAN’s benefit from being hosted?
• Is the 2^nd SAN required to be active?
• What size of network link is their between the 2 SAN

For further information and/ or pricing please click here or call 0845 094 3366