VMware Delivers vCloud Hybrid Service – DR ($835/Month With 1TB)

VMware, Inc. announced its vCloud Hybrid Service – DR, a new cloud-based DR service that provides a continuously available recovery site for VMware virtualized data centers.

It is simple to set up, can be self-managed, and is a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional DR solutions.

The service is available in all five vCloud Hybrid Service data centers in the U.S. and U.K.

Built on vSphere, vCloud Hybrid Service – DR continuously replicates VMs to a virtual data center within vCloud Hybrid Service, with a RPO of up to 15 minutes, from just $835 a month including 1TB of storage and standby cloud capacity.

The cost and simplicity of the service means customers can avoid the burden of owning tertiary data centers for DR, and can now continuously protect applications that were previously vulnerable because it was too expensive and complicated to include them in a DR plan.

“Everyone wants enterprise DR, but without the complexity and cost of traditional DR,” said Jerry Sanchez, VP of hosting operations, Planview, Inc. “We know how to administer vSphere, so the simplicity and familiarity of administering vCloud Hybrid Service – DR is just as easy, making this service a natural fit for us. Typically, DR services require expensive professional services to install and maintain. With the VMware solution, the data and applications are simply mirrored in vCloud Hybrid Service, ready to go whenever trouble strikes, and with the benefits of a cloud-based economic model.”

New Approach to BC and DR
BC is a critical priority for organizations, but only a small fraction of applications are continuously protected because DR solutions can be expensive and complicated. For many businesses, DR involved maintaining exact duplicates of data center hardware configurations, more than doubling costs, and the challenges of maintaining the same configuration meant DR tests were often difficult, highly manual, and infrequently performed. vCloud Hybrid Service – DR offers a simple, automated process for replicating and recovering critical applications and data in a warm standby environment at a fraction of the cost of duplicating infrastructure or maintaining an active tertiary data center.

“We continue to aggressively execute our hybrid cloud vision, delivering capabilities like DR that businesses can use to extend and protect their existing IT investment to the cloud,” said Bill Fathers, SVP and GM, hybrid cloud services business unit, VMware. “VMware continues to distinguish itself from other cloud providers by making DR simple and cost-effective, allowing our customers to use a hybrid cloud approach to deliver business value, without wrestling with operational complexity and incompatibility inherent to other public clouds.”

vCloud Hybrid Service – DR is a replication and hosting service for businesses with limited or no DR solution in place today, or customers looking to replace a traditional offering with a service provider or one that is managed in-house. It provides simple and secure asynchronous replication and failover for vSphere virtual environments.

• Standby capacity on vCloud Hybrid Service
• Self-service asynchronous replication, failover and failback
• 15 minutes – 24 hour RPO
• Initial data seeding by shipping a disk (offline data transfer)
• Remote management and monitoring, with production-level support
• $835/month including 1TB of storage, standby compute capacity and two, seven day DR tests

Opportunities for Partners
Partners play a key role of delivering DR as a Service (DRaaS) to customers. VMware partners can now offer vCloud Hybrid Service – DR as a value added solution to customers who already have deployed infrastructure, or offer a solution for net-new deployments, creating the ability for bigger opportunities, while continuing to deliver value to customers. vCloud Hybrid Service – DR is sold the same way as any other VMware solution, and partners can retain the billing relationship with customers.

“The demand for DR is high because customers are looking for faster, simpler and cheaper options,” said Jason Nash, CTO, Varrow, Inc. “With vCloud Hybrid Service – DR, customers no longer have the burden of hardware and software upkeep, and have access to a simple and affordable DRaaS solution, while benefiting from trusted technology and top-class support. A cloud-based DR solution from VMware will be an easy sell for our vSphere customers looking to deploy a DR plan within their organization.”