virtualization and disaster recovery

8/4/2019 Virtualization and Disaster Recovery

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The Essentials Series

Virtualizationand Disaster

Recovery

by J. Peter Bruzzese

sponsored by


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Ar ticle 1: Data Protection in a Virtualized Environment ........................................................................ 1An Overview of Virtualization: Enhanced Protection with Less Hardware ............................... 1

Cost Savings of a Mirrored Site (Fewer Systems and Personnel) ............................................ .. 2Facilitation of Testing ................................................................................................................................... 3The Rules Regarding Traditional Data Protection Are Not Deprecated ...................................... 4Move Data Quickly and Cost Effectively Across the WAN ................................................. ................. 5The Benefits of an Effective Data Protection and Recovery Strategy ........................................... 5

Ar ticle 2: Leveraging Virtualization for High Availability and Business Continuity ................... 7HighAvailability and Business Continuity Benefits from Virtualization .................................... 7An Overview of ReplicationBased Technologies ................................................. ................................. 8

Le vels of HighAvailability Resiliency ..................................................................................................... 10Common Replication Configurations .................................................................................................. 10Ensuring Critical Business Functions ...................................................................................................... 11Regulatory Compliance within a Virtualized Environment ............................................ ............... 12Summary .............................................................................................................................................................. 12

Ar ticle 3: Replication and Recovery Management Solutions ............................................................. 13Pricing Models Come in All Shapes and Sizes....................................................................................... 13Server Virtualization ROI .............................................................................................................................. 14

Se lling the Solution .......................................................................................................................................... 16Purchase a Virtualization Solution ........................................... .......................................... .................. 16Rent a Virtualization Solution ................................................................................................................ 16

Summary .............................................................................................................................................................. 17


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Article1:DataProtectioninaVirtualizedEnvironmentIn a traditional network environment, the hardware is the heart of operations. But timesare changing, and although hardware is still an indispensable part of the operations in anyIT center, software technologies are expanding into new territories. These technologies aimto provide the sameor betterlevel of strength found in a hardware solution whiledecreasing the number of hardware devices you need in your business environment. One ofthe most popular technologies in this regard is virtualization.

AnOverviewofVirtualization:EnhancedProtectionwithLess

HardwareVirtualization is not a new conceptit has existed for decadesbut what is new about it isthe rapid rate of adoption in IT departments of all sizes and shapes. Once used mainly intesting and development, virtualization is now a key player in production environments. Inthe event you havent had a chance to work with virtualization software, lets review theoverall concept.

The concept of virtualization is simpleyou run a piece of software (a virtual machine) ona PC as if this virtual machine is just an ordinary software application. In the virtualmachine, you can install the operating system (OS) of your choice and on top of this OS,install any applications you need. This way, on one hardware configuration, you can havemany virtual PCs, each of them running an OS and software applications of its own,

independently from the OS and the applications you are running on the main (host)computer. Keep in mind, however, that the layer running above the hardware is standinginbetween your virtual systems and the bare metal, so to speak. The thinner that layer canbe the better.

What stands between the hardware and the guest OS is called a hypervisor. Typically onstandalone systems, the hypervisor runs off the conventional OS that you might be using,whereas a hypervisor that runs directly on the bare metal or as close to it as possible is amore serveroriented virtual machine (VM) architecture that you would look to whenconsidering virtualization and data protection.


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Note

Although multiple virtual machines running on one physical machineillustrate what server virtualization is, there is another equally important

type of virtualization that is also used in IT environmentsstoragevirtualization. Server virtualization uses the hardware resources of onecomputer to run multiple OSs/servers/applications; storage virtualizationdeals with storage devices only (for instance, disk arrays). Similar to servervirtualization, which abstracts logical servers from the physical hardwareinfrastructure they run on, storage virtualization abstracts storage from theseparate drives where data is physically dispersed. Briefly, data can bewritten over multiple physical disks, but from the administration console, allthese disks appear as one logical entry. The term storagevirtualization mightnot be as mainstream as its server counterpart; there is hardly an IT personwho has not heard of RAID, SAN, or NAS, which are examples of storage

virtualization.

Typically, when one says disaster recovery, RAID technologies are the first to come tomind. Although storage virtualization technology is a more common direction people lookto when attempting to protect their data and system availability, server virtualization isbecoming so reliable and cost effective that disasters are no longer mitigated throughtraditional backup/restore methods. In fact, using virtualization technology, a companymay be able to achieve 100% availability with complete data protection.

CostSavingsofaMirroredSite(FewerSystemsandPersonnel)

Server virtualization, realtime data replication, and failover technology are capabilities

that provide a high level of protection while keeping costs at a minimum. As alreadyexplained, server virtualization allows you to maximize performance by allowing fewervirtualized servers to do the work of multiple physical servers, yet at the same time cutcosts becausewhen compared with nonvirtualized environmentsserver virtualizationallows for fewer machines to perform the same amount of work.

Where virtualization really shines for data protection and disaster recovery is in the abilityto eliminate the typical hardware equality required in physical server redundancy andrecovery solutions. The pieces of hardware become less critical in a virtualizedenvironment. By moving to a virtual model with a hardwareagnostic formation, you canrestore systems without a concern for identical hardware or even nearidentical hardware.This provides a quicker and far more efficient disaster recovery solution.


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Host servers must be powerful machines (in terms of CPU and RAM mainly). Although theminimum requirements of most server virtualization solutions are moderate, optimalperformance cant be achieved on a weak machine. In any case, adding more RAM orupgrading to a faster CPU is much cheaper than purchasing a separate brandnew

.machineone of the points that make server virtualization a costeffective solution

One of the biggest obstacles to choosing an effective protection solution is cost. If acompanys fiscal needs were not an issue, there are many advanced hardware and softwaresolutions that provide a really robust data protection mechanism. However, the reality isthat very few, if any, IT departments can afford to invest millions in such a robust system.Of course, in those cases, where data protection is more than vital (for example, militarysystems), cost comes second to reliability.

There are many robust solutions that might not necessarily be military strength but arevigorous enough to protect critical data. Very often, the optimal solution is a high level ofdata protection at an affordable price; these solutions are what a typical IT departmentneeds.

In addition to cutting hardware costs, virtualization allows for a reduction in the number ofrequired personnel, thus providing for wagerelated savings. Virtual environments can becentralized and managed remotely, so there is need for fewer personnel working on theadministration of systems, and your workforce can now be used for other tasks. Certainly,in a challenging economy with possible shrinking budgets being offered to IT departments,the ability to decrease personnel resources is a motivator.

FacilitationofTesting

As I have already mentioned, before going mainstream in production environments,virtualization was used mainly for testing. The uses of virtualization for testing have by no

means decreased and even companies that dont use virtualization in a productionenvironment use it daily for testing.

The advantages of virtualization for testing are obvious. Having your data virtualizedallows for more frequent testing than with physical servers. You just copy the testing setupfrom another machine or restore it from a backup, and you are ready to go. There is noneed to install and configure applications or OSsyou simply copy the file of the virtualmachine. In addition, while physical server testing can oftentimes be painful andfrustrating, virtualization allows servers to be shut down and turned on easily, evenallowing for remote server failure simulation without concern over physical access to thesystem that you normally prepare for when testing remote failures on physical systems.


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However, you should be aware of the potential downsides of this solution. Withvirtualization for testing, one of the drawbacks is that it is not an impossibility (thoughcertainly it is not the norm) to observe differences in the behavior of applications when runon a virtualized platform than when run on standalone machines. In some cases, thedifferences might be critical and, in even rarer cases, it is possible that there are

applications that cannot (or shouldnt) be run in a virtualized environment. Fortunately,such cases are infrequent; thus, typically, it is appropriate to use virtualization for testing.

TheRulesRegardingTraditionalDataProtectionAreNotDeprecatedWhen discussing data protection in a virtualized environment, the perception might beonesided in thinking that virtualization is useful only for remote site servers supportingreplication and failover. Its true that virtualization provides for amazing recoverabilitythrough WAN disaster recovery sites, but its important to remember that you must have abackup system designed into your production environment to ensure the protection ofboth physical and virtual servers.

Data protection starts at the physical level. If there are no clearly defined rules about howyou protect data physically, even the most sophisticated methods are easily compromised.The physical aspect of data protection includes access, backups, and protection againstnatural disasters, and it is the basis of your data protection policy.

You must have clear rules regarding who and under what circumstances data can beaccessed. Unauthorized access makes any other data protection methods useless. Youshould also regularly back up your data (weekly, daily, or even realtime) and keep thebackups in a safe place. Natural disasters dont happen on a daily basis but when they dohappen, the result is devastating. Therefore, if you want to make sure that your data is

protected against physical destruction, always make reasonable measures to protect thepremises against flood, fire, earthquakes, and so on, and above all, always keep an uptodate backup at a secure remote location.


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To fully enjoy the benefits of virtualization for data protection, you need to apply certainmeasures to ensure that the data is protected from risks. Virtualization is not a panacea,and if you neglect basic rules in regard to data protection in general and in a virtualizedenvironment in particular, dont count on virtualization to save your data. When data isdispersed over a network, no matter whether it is a LAN or a WAN, and this network is not

guarded properly, there is no effective data protection mechanism in place. A network is assecure as its weakest part, so if there are gaps in the security policies (that is, roles andprivileges are not properly defined and enforced), the integrity of the whole system isunder question. Generally, the least privilege rule is a great security policy, so youre betterbeing restrictive now rather than sorry later.

MoveDataQuicklyandCostEffectivelyAcrosstheWANWhen disaster strikes, the last thing you have is time to think what to evacuate first.Usually, even if there is a detailed disaster recovery plan (and such a plan should be part ofany data protection policy in every IT department) and you know what you must do, time is

a critical asset and you dont have long hours at your disposal.

Thus, you need data protection solutions that have the ability to move data quickly and costeffectively across the WAN. If you can count on greater utilization of the links involved inthe WAN portion of your protection plan, you have much more flexibility to plan properly.Combining virtualization with a solid WAN connection to a disaster recovery site changesthe recovery game dramatically. You can replicate both physical and virtualized serversover to virtual servers at the disaster recovery location both quickly and cost effectively.

Virtualized servers are a boon in terms of speed of data evacuation. Because virtualizedservers are in fact just software files that you can copy from one machine to another in no

time at allor can be copied automatically through specialized solutions that provide forjust that type of scenarioyour entire set of operations (servers, applications, and files)can be redundant in an alternate virtualized location. The files, which contain a virtualizedserver, are small in number (but large in size) and transferring them to a remote location ismuch easier than moving thousands of files.

Additionally, dealing with locked or open files is easier because a locked file is not aseparate entity you cant rename or move; it is just a file nested inside the file with thevirtualized server. Migration of open or locked files while users are accessing or writing tothose files is not the key concern it would be with certain simple backup/recoverysolutions. There is also not a concern over the security of those redundant files because ifthe lock is done properly, you wont be able to open and/or modify the file; thus, if the datainside the file is sensitive, you dont have to worry that when you store the file on avirtualized platform, the data inside it is readily exposed to unauthorized access.

TheBenefitsofanEffectiveDataProtectionandRecoveryStrategyThrough the flexibility of virtualization, you can encapsulate the OS, applications, and datainto a virtualized system. You can then transmit this encapsulated application within your


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production environment or to an offsite locationjust as you would transmit a data fileand make it available on a remote machine for employees to access. Even if there were noother benefits of virtualization in regard to data protection, this capability alone can cutdowntime in the event of system failure from days to hours or less.

In considering the benefits of any disaster planning and recovery solution, there are twocommon metrics that are analyzed: Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which is ameasurement of the time from the point of system failure and the time when that system isfunctional yet again, and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), which is a time definitionconnected with how much data loss is possible with the recovery. RPO relates to thetimeframe of the last good backup that can be restored in the event of a total disaster. Forexample, if a disk array fails and data is only recoverable from your tape backups, which goback to the night before (roughly 10 hours for the sake of our example), your RPO is 10hours. The interesting aspect of these two metrics is that there is the reality of what youhave and the goal that you are reaching towards. Between the reality and the goal, thereare a slew of technology options for high availability, clustering, hardware RAID,

virtualization, and so forth. The tighter your RTO and RPO requirements, the more moneyyou will have to spend, depending on the technology you choose.

Typically, companies are looking at their RTO and RPO results and seeing that traditionalmethods are not even close to being good enough for their desired objectives. This is whatis driving the movement toward virtualization. Certainly the feature benefits mentionedearlier with the ability to perform testing and manage servers remotely and more easily arecertainly a draw. But it is the ability to recovery quickly from a disaster with a minimaldisruption of business operations at an affordable price where virtualization shines.


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Article2:LeveragingVirtualizationforHighAvailabilityandBusinessContinuityThe previous article discussed the basics of virtualization and examined its benefits fordata protection. Companies can also benefit from virtualization in the areas of highavailability and business continuity. High availability and business continuity are critical;without them, adequate data protection is impossible and the problems that arise can bevery serious. In some cases, a lack of high (or more precisely, any) availability and businesscontinuity, especially for a prolonged periods of time, can threaten the very existence of acompany.

The concerns of disaster recovery, virtualization, and high availability often fall into the ITdepartments worry box. However, these concerns effect the companys ability to continue

business, and should therefore be viewed as critical by the entire companyespeciallydecision makers who all too often have shallow pockets when it comes to disaster recoveryneeds.

Modern business has a 24/7 nonstop running requirement. Consider your various serversand imagine any one of them being unavailable for any length of time. Would yourcompany be able to lose any one of your IT services and deal with a longterm disruption(or even a shortterm one)? The cost of a disruption in service could be substantial, so it isa key part of a business continuity plan to look into all approaches (both hardware andsoftwareoriented) to ensure data protection, high availability, and disaster recovery. Ashardware solutions are often cost prohibitive, companies are looking more to software andvirtualization to provide the costeffective and reliable solutions they need.

HighAvailabilityandBusinessContinuityBenefitsfromVirtualiThe following list highlights ways an organ

zationization can benefit from virtualization:

SimplificationofinfrastructureVirtualization, both server and storage,simplifies the infrastructure. All equal, when there is less hardware, there is lesscomplexity, which in turn, means that the infrastructure is easier to monitor andtroubleshoot when problems arise. This translates into less downtime and higheravailability.

EasierbranchmanagementProviding data protection to a globally dispersednetwork of machines is always a challenge, but thanks to virtualization, remotelocations are easier to manage. With virtualized solutions, there is no need to havephysical access to a machine in order to troubleshoot and restart it. Additionally,thanks to virtualization, branches can be easily consolidated, thus helping to notonly achieve higher availability and improved business continuity but also reducecosts.


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Cross platformissuesbecomeirrelevantHomogeneous networks are more ofan exception than a rule, and virtualization can make the administration ofheterogeneous environments much easier. For example, suppose you haveapplications that run on Linux but you dont have a spare machine with Linuxinstalled. If the Linux machine on which the applications are running crashes, in a

traditional, nonvirtualized environment, you are helpless. But when you usevirtualization, this scenario is not a problem. You simply copy the file with the Linuxmachine on another machine (regardless of its operating systemOS; the onlyrequirement is that the machine be capable of running a virtual machine. Thesolution is fast, easy, and efficient.

EasilyseparatebusinessunitsIn addition to centralization of resources,virtualization can be used to separate business units. Decentralization is useful inlarge infrastructures where there are many business units and it is better to isolatethem from one another in order to manage them easily as separate entities. A goodexample is a hosting provider who runs each customers sites in a separate virtualmachine, thus shielding them from the dangers of sites run in a multiclientenvironment while still using a reduced number of physical machines.

AnOverviewofReplicationBasedTechnologiesLets focus a bit more intently on the technical aspects, or more precisely, the types anduses of replicationbased technology in a virtualized environment. Replicationbasedtechnologies allow the capturing of a set of data at a particular point in time, typicallyinvolving minimal overhead and fast restoration of data. This functionality is whyreplicationbased technology is the preferred solution for providing high availability ofcritical systems. Although replication is typically viewed from the perspective of remote

WANbased replicas, using the same technology for the creation of local replicas is anothermethod to achieving business continuity.

When looking into a solution that you can count on for your environment in terms ofreplication, you want to be sure you have realtime data replication, which basically meansdata is replicating as it is coming into the local system. In some cases, the right solution issynchronous replication, which offers zero data loss by ensuring that the data is written toboth the local and remote systems with a confirmation before proceeding. In othersituations, asynchronous replication is utilized. This method requires specific data or logsto be closed out on one server before being replicated over to the other server. Withasynchronous realtime replication, there is the potential for a small amount of data loss.


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One of the concerns with replication is that a corrupt file on the production side might bereplicated over to the disaster recovery site or to a local virtualized server that you use forreplication. To meet this challenge, a feature called Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is acrucial factor to any business continuity planning. CDP provides the ability to revert back toan earlier version of data. Thus, in the event corruption occurs, you can replay pointin

time versions backward to remove that corruption. Depending on the technology you areusing, there are different granularities to such a solution. Some solutions may have fixedtime intervals of restoration (every hour, 5 hours, 24 hours, and so forth). Whenconsidering a replication solution, factor in a solutions ability to offer CDP based on eitherevery write or a specified timeframe (even if those timeframes are as narrow as seconds).

You should also pursue replication technology that considers WAN optimization in eitherhardware or software (or both). Although you might be replicating data between two localsystems in your scenario, typically for disaster recovery sites, you need a WAN connectionto an offsite location. That WAN connection becomes a critical component not only for thereplication process but also in the event you need to support your offices from that disaster

recovery site (and then eventually when you need to recover over those WAN connections).While looking for a product to meet your needs, consider WAN optimization an essentialitem on your checklist. Depending on the size of your environment, you should also have areplication strategy that centralizes your servers, relocating them to primary andsecondary data centers.

Replication can work in many environments, but you need to take into account whathardware and software you will be using because the existing environment could be anissue that limits your choices. For instance, there are virtualization solutions that work ononly certain OSs and on only particular models of hardware. If your hardware/software isnot supported by the virtualization solution of your choice, you will either have to choose adifferent virtualization solution or replace your hardware/software, which could be veryexpensive. Consider, for example, environments that use a mixture of Microsoft solutions(Exchange, SQL, IIS Web servers, file servers) across both 32 and 64bit architectures.Suppose they also utilize an Oracle server, a BlackBerry server, and Linux or Solarisservers. They must ensure that the solution they are pursuing has the ability to support allof these platforms. If not, they will need to continue investigating for an allinclusivesolution. Fortunately, many of the leading virtualization solutions support a wide range ofhardware/software platforms, so chances are that you will not face this incompatibilityissue. It is worthwhile, however, to first double check compatibility and then proceed to thechoice of a replication configuration.


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LevelsofHighAvailabilityResiliencyThere are a variety of ways to implement virtualization for an environment. In addition tochecking possible compatibility issues, you must take into account the following replicationconfiguration considerations:

Decidingwhattoreplicate. First you need to decide if you will replicate everythingor only some data. This decision influences your choice of replication configuration.If you decide to mirror a server (that is, replicate everything on it), it is best, thoughnot mandatory, if the replication target is a dedicated machine or at least a verypowerful one. Of course, you can replicate many virtual servers to one targetmachine, but only if you have made wise disaster recovery preparations for thatcritical server (which leads to our next point).

Decidingwhereyouwillreplicateto. Choosing the replication target (the machineyou will be replicating to) is also important because if you make unwise choices and

your target fails, you will have no replica to restore from. One of the worst cases ishoicewhen you decide to replicate all your virtualized systems to one target. This cis risky because the target becomes a single point of failure.

Additionally, if the applications you are replicating do not coexist peacefully on onemachine (for example, SQL Server, a Lotus server, and an Oracle database or two versionsof Exchange) and you replicate them on one machine, you can bet at least one application(or even all of them) will stop working. Fortunately, in this case, virtualization can helpbecause all you need to do is create a separate virtual machine for each of the applicationsand replicate them there. Of course, if you are replicating database applications, whichgenerally use a lot of resources (CPU time, writes and reads to the disk, and so on), youneed to insure that the physical machine is a powerful oneotherwise the whole scenario

might not work.

CommonReplicationConfigurations

Choosing what and where to replicate are very important decisions. The next step is tochoose how exactly you will perform the replication. There are many possibleconfigurations that use virtualization for high availability and business continuity. Thefollowing list focuses on three common configuration possibilities:

ReplicationofaphysicalsetofserverstoavirtualsetofserversTheadvantage of using a physical set of servers replicating back to a virtual set ofservers is that you can utilize fewer virtual servers on the back end. This

configuration makes sense when your frontend servers are not under a very heavyload and/or you are not replicating everything from them. The host machine of thevirtualized system must be a very robust one; otherwise, the whole configuration isrisky.


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ReplicationofavirtualsetofserverstoavirtualsetofserversThisconfiguration uses virtualized servers both for the production side and for therecovery site (or for a localized set of virtualized servers onsite). Using this

configuration allows you to maximize hardware utilization on both the front endand back end. Due to numerous advantages over the other configurations, thisconfiguration is frequently recommended as the most cost effective way to increaseavailability.

ReplicationofavirtualsetofserverstoaphysicalsetofserversThisconfiguration is rarely used because it offers the least cost savings and notnecessarily the highest availability. Additionally, it is more difficult to administer.This configuration makes sense if you happen to have spare physical machines atyour remote location that you want to utilize.

Virtualization opens new perspectives for data protection. Thanks to virtualization, it is

possible to achieve high levels of availability and business continuity at an affordable price.However, not all virtualization solutions are equal.

Note

The next article of the series will focus on the pricing models forvirtualization solutions, thus helping you to decide how to find the perfectcombination of quality and price to suit your needs.

EnsuringCriticalBusinessFunctionsOne of the global benefits of virtualization for a company is that it makes IT operations

much easier and more reliable. Virtualization makes company management easier bysignificantly reducing the required hardware and the number of people involved toperform the same amount of work. Managing less hardware and people eases themanagement of the company as a whole.

Sometimes it is neither possible nor necessary to ensure high availability for every singlebusiness function in your organization. There is no doubt that it is best to provide 100%high availability for every business function, but the price and effort required to do socould be more than you can afford. In this case, you need to make sure that at least yourcritical business functions are covered by your highavailability efforts.

Critical business functions vary from one company to another and you need to identify

them for your company rather than borrow them from the docket of another company.Think of all the business functions within your organization that if interrupted could leadto serious financial, legal, or other damages or penalties.


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Through virtualization, you achieve high availability for your critical business functionsbecause it allows for rapid restoration of these functions after they have been interruptedby a disaster. With virtualization, restoration of a failed system is as easy as copying theconfiguration from one machine to another. Also, when you have multiple servers on onephysical machine and one of them fails, you can quickly isolate the failed server and

prevent disruption of operation of the other servers on the same machine or on thenetwork as a whole.

RegulatoryCompliancewithinaVirtualizedEnvironmentHigh availability and business continuity are not only essential for internal operations; veryoften, external factors such as regulations make it mandatory for companies to providecontinued business. Regulations such as the SarbanesOxley Act and the Health InsurancePortability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) are examples.

Thanks to virtualization, it is possible to consolidate data centers and have centralized,

stricter security policies in compliance with these regulations. In that aspect, virtualizationis not a luxury, it is a necessity; if your IT department is not compliant with theseregulations, noncompliance could lead to financial penalties, a drop in company stocks,loss of customer confidence, and lost profits.

SummaryVirtualization can help a company to achieve high availability and business continuitywhile keeping the costs under control. When a company cant ensure high availability forits IT operations, consequences are hefty. High availability is not a function of technicalexpertise and modern equipment only; it is also a function of management capabilities (or

their lacking). However, when a company doesnt have the necessary expertise andequipment to handle disaster recovery quickly, even the most brilliant manager is helpless.That is why the successful combination for high availability and business continuity is theright equipment/expertise and good managerial skills. In this aspect, virtualization is avaluable ally to any good manager.


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Article3:ReplicationandRecoveryManagementSolutionsAn important aspect to implementing virtualization and disaster recovery is the pricingmodel. Every company is different and their needs vary; every virtualization solution isunique as well. One of the important factors for a decision maker to consider is theenvironment you currently have (for example, a mixed environment) and what the pricingstructure you are investigation offers in terms of simplicity, implementation, andscalabilitynot to mention cost.

PricingModelsComeinAllShapesandSizesPricing models are typically uniform in concept (persocket, perinstance, perprocessor, orperCPU models) although you might discover unique naming for these solutionsdepending on the vendor you are working with. Also, very often a pricing solution comeswith variations depending on the needs of the client, which is why it is always best before acompany begins the implementation phase to perform thorough research of the availableoptions. Many vendors are flexible in their pricing models and with some research (andmaybe a bit of negotiation), it will be possible to find a solution that satisfies all partiesinvolved in the process.

In addition to virtualization options, some companies provide entire solutions for disasterrecovery. With these product suites, you must factor in the cost spending/savings you hopeto achieve with the added functionality they provide. You might prefer to pick and choosepieces of your solution from multiple vendors, but traditionally, a single, economicalpackage with a complete set of tools at your disposal from a single vendor is the easiestway to meet your needs.

VirtualizationLicensingPriceModels

PerinstanceA fee is charged based upon each instance of theapplication server running in its own virtual machine. With virtualization,it is not uncommon for virtual clusters to have physical servers withdifferent CPU configurations (twoway, fourway). A simple failover froma twoway to a fourway system may violate CPUbased licensing,whereas perinstance would hold up in a disaster recovery virtualizedenvironment.

Perprocessor (or perCPU)This model allows a company to license byprocessor (the number of processors within a system) and allowsmultiple virtualized instances of the OS on that machine. Thus, you mighthave a license based on the physical processor(s) within the system butunlimited virtualization on top of that. Some pricing models even focus onthe number of sockets or the number of cores within the processor,perhaps ignoring the virtualization aspect altogether.


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ServerVirtualizationROIOne of the first steps a company needs to make in the direction of virtualizationimplementation is an indepth analysis of the expected return on investment (ROI) of theendeavor. There are many sophisticated formulas to calculate ROI; basically, they all boildown to calculating how much you will spend and how much you will gain by a particular

solution.

ROI calculation is no easy task and different interpretations could lead to very differentresults.To calculate ROI, you need to determine the costs your company could mitigate oreliminate by adopting virtualization. This looks pretty simple and straightforward but inreality there are many factors to consider. Very often, some direct costs dont get adequateweight (that is, they are underestimated or overestimated) in the equation and indirectcosts are not counted at all. The same applies to the expected benefits. When the deviationsare substantial, the final result will also vary significantly.

Lets have a look at a simple example. Imagine that you want to obtain 20 virtualization

licenses for your IT department. You might first ask, What is the current state of yourexisting servers? In the event the systems are moderately old, you may need to upgrade. Ifyour machines are very old, it might not make sense to upgrade them, so the only choice isto buy n are:ew (powerful) machines. Your options

y areUse your existing machines as the

Upgrade your existing machines

Buy newer, more powerful machines

The first case is the most favorable in terms of costs because you will not have to spend acent on new hardware. In fact, if your hardware has been underutilized, this scenario is

quite probable.

The third case is the most expensive; however, when calculating costs, what you are hopingto see is that even with the purchase of new systems, this will ultimately provide areasonable ROI while providing for the failover and data recoverability you need. To clarify,if you want to have 20 dedicated machines at $2000 each, this is $40,000 altogether. If youwant to have 20 machines but you plan to use virtualization, you can get 10 machines (oreven 5 or less) and deploy multiple virtual servers on them. If you get 10 machines of thesame power as the machines for the case without virtualization, this means that in thesecond case, you will have to pay $20,000 less. Obviously, there are costs related toimplementing virtualization, so it is not precise to say that right now you have saved

$20,000 because of virtualization. And certainly you need to see that in the long run thesavings of less personnel and increased high availability and disaster recovery should allfactor into the ROI.


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The second case, which is the most common, is to upgrade your existing machines in orderto make them powerful enough to host a virtualization solution. Here, costs also vary, butyou can go with $500 to $800 or even less per machine for more RAM and/or a faster CPU.Of course, this does not mean you should get the cheapest 4GB of RAM you can findyouwill be building a server, not a PC for a temp worker doing data entry; thus, you cant afford

to get the cheapest, lowquality components. Still, all equal, upgrading an existing machineis much cheaper than buying a brand new one.

In addition to the savings you will realize by spending less on hardware while stillperforming the same amount of w is:ork, virtualization offers savings on an ongoing bas

Youwillneedlessspace10 machines less could save you the need to rentadditional room(s) or you could stop renting some of your current facilities. Thiscould save you lets say $1000 a month. (Of course, if your premises are located inan expensive region, the rent for the additional room could be more and yoursavings will be higher.) This is $12,000 per year, which is the price of six newmachines!

Youwillneedlessenergy10 machines less also means less energy for poweringand cooling them. Energy expenses are a major article in any IT budget, and themore you cut down the energy bill, the better. The savings in this group could be$200 to $500 (partially depending on how much you will spend on cooling, whichlargely varies among locations and seasons), which results in at least $2400 to$3000 a year in savings.

YouwillneedlessstaffThis benefit might not be the most tangible and you willhardly cut your IT department because of virtualization, but it is a fact thatvirtualization helps to reduce the staff you need. Here, savings vary enormouslyifyou require 10 hours of service less at $50 per hour, this is $500 a month saved. 10hours a month (or 2.5 hours a week) is not much and it is quite possible that youwill save more admin hours a month, resulting in $6000 to $10,000 or even moresavings per year.

Keep in mind, however, that a substantial ROI may not occur immediately. In some cases, itmay even take a year or two to begin seeing results. But you are looking at virtualization asa solution first, as a savings avenue second. All solutions initially come at a price, but havingan easier method of data protection and business continuity that actually brings down yourcosts over the long run is worth pursuing.

As you can see, ROI can vary widely among companies, so you need to do your homework

and calculate ROI in your case as precisely as possible. Doing so will ensure yourexpectations for a virtualization solution are realistic.


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SellingtheSolutionThe first step in the decisionmaking process is to determine ROI calculations, but theprocess does not end here. Together with (or even before) the ROI analysis, you need toconsider the pricing model you will be using. There are many pricing models and your

choice largely affects your ROI. Lets focus on two solution typespurchase of avirtualization solution and rental of a virtualization solution.

PurchaseaVirtualizationSolution

The first option you have is to purchase a virtualization solution. Purchasing avirtualization solution doesnt mean hiring a team of developers who will create a custommade solution for you because this approach is way too expensive (also, with virtualizationbecoming a mainstream technology, this inevitably leads to drop in prices, so there aremany affordable and solid readymade virtualization solutions).

Being that the prices of licenses vary dramatically, before you go shopping, have a look at

the price lists of the major vendors and see what they offer. However, you need to have inmind that the final price depends on many factors, such as: Are you a new client? Howmany licenses do you plan to buy? Will you buy training and support? Thus, you must beprepared for drastic differences in the offers you will get. On the positive side, it is possibleto negotiate a fair price.

You might also want to hire a consultant to handle everything around the selection of theproduct, the procedure of purchasing it, and the deployment itself. This route might be a bitmore expensive, but if you dont have the inhouse resources (that is, people who canhandle this task) or if you need the solution soon, hiring a consultant could be the betterchoice and possibly even the more cost effective choice in the end.

RentaVirtualizationSolution

An alternative to purchasing a virtualization solution is to rent virtualization. There aremany services, for instance Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing, managedcapacity, managed services, serverinstance based solutions, and a la carte offerings thatessentially revolve around the fact that you dont buy the license and you dont deploy thesolution inhouse but rent the installation from another company and pay a (most often)monthly fee for the service. There are differences between each of the listed solutions, sobefore you make a determination, check what you will be getting from your virtualizationsolution hosting provider and how much it will cost.

Renting a virtualization solution can be cheaper than purchasing and deploying it inhouse,but this is not an absolute rule. There are cases when renting a virtualization solution ismore expensive than purchasing it, especially in the long run and from a technical point ofview. Also, there are pros and cons for using SaaS, clouds, and son, but generally theseservices are a better option for small companies with no dedicated IT staff and with a fewmachines only because when you outsource virtualization to pros, it is much easier for youand (as a rule) more efficient than deploying the solution inhouse.


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SummaryIn a world that requires 24/7 business continuity, data protection and disaster recoveryoptions have reached a new level through virtualization. Enabling the ability to providerealtime replication, simplified and centralized management, and immediate failover withhigh availability, all the while using fewer resources, virtualization is a solution every

ompany should consider.c

virtualization and disaster recovery

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