VMware Partner VirtualSharp Unveils ReliableDR 3.0

At CloudBeat 2011, VirtualSharp Software announced the newest release of its product, ReliableDR 3.0.

The cloud era heralds much higher expectations for service uptime than legacy Disaster Recovery tools can provide. VirtualSharp, an elite-level VMware Technology Alliance Partner, developed a new way to address Disaster Recovery through process orchestration across data centers. VirtualSharp’s technology was field-developed based upon needs of early adopters of VMware virtualization and cloud technologies in the 2006-2008 time frame. Demand is strong, and VirtualSharp has customers across several sectors, both in SMBs and major enterprises, including two of the world’s largest financial companies.

"In the context of Disaster Recovery assurance, VirtualSharp has no direct rivals, and Disaster Recovery testing is becoming more and more critical as IT organizations move their virtualization efforts into mission-critical production applications," said Dave Simpson, Senior Analyst at The 451 Group. "As virtualization expands into tier one applications, the need for automated Disaster Recovery testing and certification will become much more critical."

"For the longest time, Disaster Recovery has been narrowly focused on data protection, without an integrated view over the entire collection of assets that inter-operate to deliver IT as a service," said Carlos Escapa, Co-founder and CEO of VirtualSharp Software. "With ReliableDR 3.0, VirtualSharp delivers an integrated, vertical Disaster Recovery solution across the IT stack, from storage to application, that can be delivered for cloud environments using a zero-footprint, self-service architecture."

VirtualSharp was founded in Europe in 2010 and has seen initial success with large customers across that geography that use ReliableDR in private and public clouds. With increased market interest from US-based companies, the company is now officially entering the US market with investment to meet the needs of its new customer base.

"VirtualSharp’s solution is truly unique and brings about a whole new level of automation to Disaster Recovery," said Wim Peeters, CEO of Herithos, provider of hosting solutions in Belgium. "We see great potential in removing Disaster Recovery complexity and in delivering Recovery as a Service, particularly to the SMB market."

A data center manager at one of the world’s largest hotel chains commented: "VirtualSharp’s ReliableDR reduces complexity and automates Disaster Recovery testing in a completely new and innovative manner. We had the product protecting Sharepoint servers within two hours and across two heterogeneous data centers after an extremely simple, wizard-driven install."

New features in ReliableDR 3.0

Multitenancy
End customers will be able to take advantage of the economies of scale provided by the cloud by sharing Disaster Recovery testing resources, without needing dedicated infrastructure. Hosters will be able to provide a low monthly cost that not only replicates and secures data to cloud, but more importantly certifies recoverability and assures time to service in case of failover. End customers will benefit from not needing to have specialized staff or to have to work weekends or holidays to perform Disaster Recovery tests. In addition, deployment costs will be low and time to value will accelerate as VirtualSharp’s solution has zero footprint in the end customer data center. For hosters, multitenancy will also reduce the customer acquisition cost as administrative tasks will be automated and partly delegated to the end customers. Without multitenancy, hosters had to incur up-front costs to deploy and manage dedicated resources to each customer.

Application-specific SLAs
RTOs and RPOs can be set individually for each application. For those applications that need more protection, hosters can set the frequency of Disaster Recovery tests as often as required and charge accordingly. Hosters can also provide value-added services to assure the health of the components of the applications and remediate any compliance threats detected during the Disaster Recovery testing processes.

Role-based access control
End customers can gain access to compliance data with a granular access level. This will allow application owners, auditors and compliance officers to independently verify the resilience of the IT services that they are responsible for, without compromising on security and confidentiality.

Web Oriented Architecture (WOA)
Access to test results will be provided through web services that can be accessed from mobile device including smartphones and tablets. IT and non-IT staff alike can obtain the recovery status of each application in real time, or look at the historical compliance data to evaluate service resilience over longer periods of time.

Embeddable dashboard
Leveraging WOA, ReliableDR will provide an API to integrate the dashboard to implement administrative functions out of the hoster’s portal, or embed them in their Disaster Recovery cloud governance tools that can be provided to end customers. This will give customers at-a-glance visibility of all aspects regarding the hoster’s service health and quality, and the ability to drill down into specific items.
        
ReliableDR 3.0 will be available in the first quarter of 2012, directly from VirtualSharp and its authorized channel partners. Existing 2.x customers will be entitled to a free upgrade to version 3.0 based on their current maintenance agreements.