DataCore Leverages ROBOs to Cut Business Continuity Costs for vSphere Customers

DataCore Software is using VMworld 2009 to introduce VMware customers to its new Advanced Site Recovery (ASR) solution. The company has developed a distributed and cost-effective way to have IT assets at remote office and branch offices (ROBOs) take over for the main datacenter when the central machines are unable to meet processing obligations. Whether that is during planned facility outage or an unexpected disaster makes no difference.

“We recognize that economic pressures preclude all but the most affluent organizations from dedicating another site to back up their main data center. So we’ve chosen to tap the horsepower available at the ROBOs during emergencies,” explains Augie Gonzalez, product marketing director at DataCore. “Given a choice, customers will opt to run their business on systems in a remote office or branch office machine versus not doing business at all.”

For VMware vSphere customers, remote servers whose primary duty is branch office computing, are given a second ‘dormant’ personality to be awakened as needed. When the main site can’t get the job done, each branch office takes on a piece of the back-up role in line with their processing capacity.

DataCore ASR performs its work in the background, continuously replicating disk updates between the main datacenter and each participating branch office. Only the subset of information appropriate to a branch’s back-up role is transmitted. The distributed asynchronous replication can be offloaded to specific servers running only the DataCore software, or can execute inside a virtual machine alongside applications as system resources allow.

When an emergency ensues, the push of a button triggers ASR to use the last known good state from the central site to quickly restart the workloads at the back-up locations. From this point on, the designated remote machines carry on their portion of the workload in place of the main datacenter servers. The switchover process is coordinated with VMware vCenter and reversed when the main site is once again ready.

Beyond the clear cost savings of repurposing ROBO IT assets and personnel for business continuity, DataCore’s innovative distributed approach yields several other benefits. For example, regular disaster recovery tests and refresher training can be performed at each branch during periods of slow activity while the main datacenter processing continues undisturbed.

The combination of ASR with vSphere supports configurations where different physical servers and storage devices are used at ROBOs from those found at the central site, as is commonplace in most distributed organization.

ASR Additional Information, Pricing and Availability
DataCore ASR delivers the very latest in business continuity from the industry’s true storage virtualization pioneer. The Advance Site Recovery software option for SANsymphony and the new ASR capabilities are available today through DataCore ASR-certified implementation partners. The ASR option starts at $2,000 per site.