Saturday, March 26, 2016

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Store Virtual VSA Software



Today’s servers have a lot of compute and internal storage capacity.  Only a fraction of it is used for running various applications.  Store Virtual VSA transforms the server’s internal or direct attached storage into an enterprise level shared storage. This helps to deliver lower total cost of ownership and superior ease of management, keeping the same physical foot print.

This can be used in various ways depending on the requirement.  It can provide dedicated performance and high availability required at the primary location.  For remote locations it can work as a feature rich shared storage and disaster recovery.  An all flash array can be created with VSA for maximum performance. And with Store Virtual Adaptive Optimization, one can automatically migrate only the data that needs maximum performance to SSD .

The VSA has a scale out architecture which offers the ability to add storage capacity on the fly without compromising on performance. It consolidated the internal and external disks into a pool of shared storage.
Network Raid which is a unique feature of Store Virtual family stripes and protects multiple copies of data across multiple storage nodes, eliminating a single point of failure. One can include storage nodes from different racks, buildings and even cities to the Network raid to provide seamless application high availability with transparent failover and fall back.

All VSA nodes in the environment across multiple locations can be managed from Centralized management console for simplified and easy management.  Moreover as the storage needs evolve,  it is easy to migrate from a VSA to a physical Store Virtual box .

VSA includes other advanced features like reservation less snapshots and thin provisioning also. It has plug ins for VMware v Center and Microsoft System Center to centrally administer both virtual machines and storage. The remote copy feature enables centralized backup and disaster recovery.

See a brief video on Store Virtual VSA Overview at below link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt_4ppnjwwM

Friday, January 8, 2016

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) : Disaster Recovery Automation Software



Many organizations have a disaster recovery site in place but when it comes to testing the DR site for fail-over, most of them do not have a clear plan or readiness for same, as it has always been a cumbersome process. Same applies to moving the Data Center or going for a DR in cloud. VMWare came up with a solution to this for a virtualized environment.

Site Recovery Manager provides simple and reliable recovery and mobility of virtual machines between sites with zero or very less downtime.  It integrates with the underlying replication technology like v Sphere Replication or array based replication solutions from major storage vendors to provide non-disruptive testing and automated orchestration of recovery plans.

SRM enables the IT team to do DR drills or recovery testing, as frequently as required, in an isolated network, so that production applications are not impacted. And the detailed reports generated in this testing ensures regulatory compliance.

If the client is using a certified stretched storage solution, SRM can enable live migration of applications between two sites. With this they can achieve zero downtime disaster avoidance or a seamless data center migration, whichever is the need.

SRM can use VMWare logical switches to map network and security policies across two sites , so that the network mapping process also becomes automated.

See a brief video on Site Recovery Manager Overview at below link.