TwinStrata Introduces CloudArray On-Demand DR-as-a-Service for VMware Users

TwinStrata
Inc. announced CloudArray
DRaaS, a component of the CloudArray offering that enables DR or
VMware users on-demand without requiring continuous investment in
secondary infrastructure or sites.

Traditional DR alternatives
have required investments in offsite infrastructure and resources,
such as maintaining an off-site data center, replicated storage
systems and even standby servers. Meanwhile, cloud-based DR
alternatives for VMware environments have been limited by
incompatibility and administration, often requiring third-party
conversion, migration and/or backup tools – which this service makes
obsolete. It eliminates cost and infrastructure expansion associated
with such redundancy, while still providing a mechanism for
recovering both data and applications in the event of a disaster.

This enables mid-market and
small enterprise organizations to implement an enterprise DR strategy
at less than a tenth the cost of either hosted offsite options or
secondary site infrastructure. Organizations using the solution can
expect spin-up times of servers in two to four hours – and
near-immediate restores under ideal conditions – for typical
environments ranging in increments of 50 VMs or more.

"Today, we use a
combination of TwinStrata, cloud storage and an always-on cloud
compute environment to drive our DR strategy," said Vernon
Jackson, senior systems engineer, SEPA Laboratories, Southeastern Pathology Associates. "While
it works well, it’s pretty costly to keep secondary infrastructure up
and running in the cloud just so we can run DR tests once a quarter.
With this new CloudArray DRaaS offering, we can eliminate eight
months worth of cloud compute costs, while still maintaining a
quarterly DR test schedule. That’s a huge savings."

About
TwinStrata cloud DRaaS

• On-demand
  DR of applications and data

• 20X cost
  savings over hosted DR

• Designed
  for VMware environments

• No
  dedicated hardware or infrastructure

• No
  conversion scripting, risky orchestrations
  or third party tools

• Expected
  2-4 hours spin-up of application servers, immediate data availability

• DR
  configuration and recovery plan stored securely in TwinStrata Portal

• Underlying
  DR infrastructure provided by SoftLayer’s VMware-based cloud compute
  environment – paid for during DR events and tests only

• 24/7/365
  support

"IT organizations
are moving to the cloud to gain agility, reduce IT costs, and
increase both service and utilization while taking advantage of the
cloud’s pay-for-what-you-use model," said Dan Iacono, cloud storage systems, IDC. "TwinStrata’s DRaaS can help IT
organizations realize those cloud benefits, and it can also help
enable an improved DR strategy, while providing flexibility and cloud
choice."

"Before this
service, we found that ‘cloud DR’ options were not particularly
viable for fully virtualized IT environments, and those few that were
integrated for VMware came at prohibitively high costs,"
said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata. "Our cloud DR
service enables VMware users to recovery data and applications
seamlessly at a fraction of the cost, making DR, BC and compliance
with recovery objectives and regulations attainable for nearly any
organization."

The offering is enabled by
CloudArray software and SoftLayer
Technologies Inc. VMware-based CloudLayer computing
infrastructure, making it suited for VMware-based environments. In
addition, it can work with or without backup software. Customers can
choose to have data and VMs stored on CloudArray, which eliminates
the need for backup software and enables recovery of a live copy of
data from a selection of snapshots in the cloud. Customers with
existing or preferred backup software can use the DRaaS in
conjunction with such software.

It currently
supports  following cloud storage providers:
SoftLayer cloud Storage,
Google Cloud Storage, Google Durable Reduced Availability (DRA),
Amazon S3, Amazon RRS and Nirvanix SDN. Expanded support for other
providers is expected in the future.

For new customers with 50
VMs or fewer, it is now included in the pricing for the CloudArray
software.

CloudArray is
available as a monthly subscription beginning at $500 per month.
Existing CloudArray customers and organizations with more than 50 VMs
can obtain expanded support for an additional monthly fee. Cloud
compute costs are incurred only during DR tests and events.
Activation of the service requires an initial configuration and
planning assessment that is stored in the portal in the event of a
disaster. Service fees include 24/7/365 support.