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Top 50 Questions on Virtualization

If you find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out the difference between Virtual Server and Hyper-V, or wanting to understand the difference between a fixed and dynamic virtual hard disk, you should check out http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/faq/. It is a vendor-neutral collection of the 50 most important questions and answers dealing with virtualization.

 

Dave Bermingham, Director of Product Management

Consider the Human Element

With virtualization being given away for free in many cases, there is really no good reason not to augment your business continuity plan and have your disaster recovery (DR) site be "hot," with failover being either automated or push-button for both your Tier 1 as well as your Tier 2 applications. The actual cost factor is negligible when you consider the benefits of being able to do complete DR testing at the push of a button, without having to scramble around for hardware and perform manual recovery steps.

Planning for disaster recovery is about much more than just getting your data offsite; you have to consider the human element as well. The less complicated your recovery process is, the more likely it will succeed. Individuals that want to take their DR procedures to the next level need to consider a fully automated recovery solution such as the SteelEye LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Windows. That's the best way to ensure business continuity through all kinds of disasters.

Dave Bermingham, Director of Product Management

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Unfortunately, 2008 has been the most active hurricane season in history, in terms of U.S. landfalls. Six tropical storms or hurricanes have made U.S. landfalls this year and approximately 50 million Americans live in locations that FEMA has designated as hurricane-prone areas.

A scary thought for data center managers is that hurricanes are only one potential disaster. Here's a checklist of the top five things that all companies should do to ensure business continuity despite a hurricane, power outage, terrorist attack or other unfortunate event.

1. Plan ahead. Disasters come in different forms. In some instances, large percentages of the workforce will evacuate. Make sure your plan has enough staff support to succeed. Also, make sure the plan isn't dependent on electricity or transportation that may not be available during a disaster.

2. Consider a server migration. It might make sense to replicate your data to a secondary server that is located at least several hundred miles from your primary site. This especially makes sense if you have employees located away from the primary site that may not be affected by the disaster but still need access to the data it holds.

3. Go virtual. Virtualization is an affordable, convenient way to protect data.

4. Practice makes perfect. Planned downtime is essential to successful business continuity planning.

5. Don't be shy. Business continuity isn't easy. You may want to place your trust in a company that specializes in the field, rather than trying to go it alone.

Bob Williamson, SVP of Product Management

Deploying Multi-Site SQL 2008 Clusters

It’s been reported by a well-respected MSMVP that some array-based replication does not work when trying to implement Multi-Site SQL 2008 clusters due to a restriction that the cluster disk resource in a SQL Server 2008 cluster is not allowed to have dependencies. The restriction is described here.

SteelEye DataKeeper Cluster Edition places no such dependencies on the storage resource and works just fine when deploying Multi-Site SQL 2008 clusters.

Dave Bermingham, Director of Product Management

An Overlooked Part of the Hyper-V Story

Quick Migration across data centers is one of the key features of the Hyper-V story that is being overlooked.  The quick migration of a Hyper-V VM across data centers is made possible by using Multi-Site Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC).  Where VMotion requires the VMs all reside on the same shared storage array, WSFC can leverage replication technology from their Multi-Site Cluster partners to not only do a quick migration from one server to another, but also from one storage array to another, either in the same data center or across the WAN in an entirely different location. 

                                                        

Quick migration of a VM across data centers is a feature that is lacking from VMware’s solution as neither VMware HA or VMotion support moving VMs across data centers to different storage arrays.  VMware’s solution for moving VMs across data centers is Site Recovery Manager.  Site Recovery Manager is positioned more as a disaster recovery solution than a quick migration solution and only supports certified array based replication solutions, not host based replication.

                                                                                                                                                                         

At the Microsoft Virtualization launch event held this past Monday in Bellevue, Wash., SteelEye announced DataKeeper’s support of Hyper-V virtual machine replication and Multi-Site Windows Server Failover Clustering support.  By combining host based replication of Hyper-V VMs with Multi-Site Windows Server Failover Clustering, a very cost-effective business continuity solution for Hyper-V VM protection can be built that includes a RPO and RTO that will be hard to match with the tools currently available from VMware.

Dave Bermingham, Director of Product Management

Keeping Your Data Safe in Uncertain Times

Worldwide, server downtime costs organizations billions of dollars each year—with IDC estimating damages at a whopping $140 billion last year. Take a moment to dissect those billions, actually looking at the different elements in play that cause both planned and unplanned downtime—such as the growing popularity of virtualization, the strict regulatory environment, the recent slew of powerful hurricanes and other natural disasters, and the constant threat of hackers and identity thieves—and it’s enough to keep any level-headed data center manager up all night.

Fortunately, there are ways to help. But, with so many different business continuity and disaster recovery options out there, where do you begin? Data replication is a great launching pad. In a recently published Enterprise Systems Journal article, SteelEye SVP Bob Williamson examined the powerful role that data replication plays in risk management strategies. Your business, be it large or small, has a unique set of network requirements. It’s imperative to take a good look at the rate of change of data across your network, your existing hardware and platform configurations, and most importantly, your budget before selecting a replication solution. 

At SteelEye, we’re simplifying data replication, offering various solutions that meet the unique needs of businesses with varying network bandwidth, server environments and budgets. We’re working with well-known technology partners like Microsoft, Citrix, VMWare and others to accommodate physical and virtual data centers that seamlessly blend numerous products from numerous vendors. We’re offering solutions that extend replication capabilities incrementally for organizations with differing network requirements and IT spending habits. SteelEye gives large and small companies an easy way to implement affordable, yet comprehensive, business continuity and disaster recovery solutions.

Hyper-V: Hype or Reality?

We are just back from the Microsoft getVIRTUALnow show which was a coming out party of sorts for Hyper-V.  Over 1000 Microsoft customers and dozens of partners attended technical sessions, keynotes and a concert by Live.

My takeaways from the event:

• Hyper-V is deployable within data centers but is playing catch-up to VMware Infrastructure. Useful features such as live migration are still to come.
• Microsoft is very commited to making Hyper-V a compelling option.  From pricing to bundling to unbundling to ecosystem buildout, it is clear that the hypervisor war is one that Microsoft wants to win.
• Partner support for Hyper-V is an integral piece of the strategy to build out a strong ecosystem of tools to ease deployment and management.  It's a great strategy to play catch-up fast.
• I spoke to a number of end users who are looking at Hyper-V as an extension to exisitng VMware deployments.  VMware has been deployed in the first phase and has helped to prove the value of virtualization.  Hyper-V is desired to be deployed in the second and future phases due to cost savings and the chance to leverage existing MS relationships within IT.

At the event, we announced and demonstrated DataKeeper support for Hyper-V replication. Our solution replicates Hyper-V virtual machines in real-time across LANs (sync) or WANs (async) for business continuity and disaster recovery.  As VMs are deployed for critical applications, having a strong disaster recovery strategy is critical.

Bob Williamson, SVP of Product Management

Get Virtual Now

Today, at the Microsoft "Get Virtual Now" launch in Bellevue, Wash., SteelEye announced DataKeeper support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. We think this is critically important because, as virtualization expands, so does the risk of a disaster.

DataKeeper Standard Edition delivers data replication services as an extension to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 while DataKeeper Cluster Edition further extends the capabilities of Windows Server Failover Clustering. Both editions support real-time replication of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines between physical servers across either LAN or WAN connections.

By keeping a running Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine in sync with a standby VM in an alternate location, DataKeeper enables disaster recovery without the data loss typically associated with traditional backup and restore technology. Real-time continuous replication of active Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VMs helps ensure that in the event of a disaster, the standby server can be activated with minimal to no data loss.

Read more about SteelEye and Hyper-V by downloading a white paper.

Dave Bermingham, Director of Product Management

Replicate or Else

This article about last week’s FAA system outage raises many valid points about business continuity. It reinforces what utilities, financial services providers and other leading companies already knew -- replication and redundancy are key, because planned and unplanned downtime can bring the system to a complete halt.

 

What the article doesn’t point out is how affordable business continuity solutions can be. With minimal financial and time investments, an organization can incorporate real-time LAN and WAN replication to keep its data safe and sound. This is even more critical for organizations like the FAA that are employing legacy systems with high-priority data. A complete overhaul isn’t necessary, but an ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure, especially when dealing with creaky old software.

 

Bob Williamson, SVP of Product Management

Protection Suite for XenServer Certified on 360is v1624 Appliance

Our Protection Suite for Citrix XenServer is now certified for mission critical use on the 360is v1624 virtualization hardware appliance. SteelEye joins VMWare and Citrix XenServer as the 3rd software vendor to achieve this certification on the v1624 hardware appliance.

More information is available here.