1. Chris Patterson Senior Director Product Management
Picking the Right DR Tool for the Job – A Service Provider’s Perspective
Chris Patterson
Senior Director Product Management
April 8, 2019

2. Disaster recovery doesn’t have to be hard
The right solutions and plans make a world of difference
When it comes to replication, there is no easy button. The market is flooded with different replication tools that take slightly different approaches to moving bits from place to place. But how do you know which one is best for you? During this session, Navisite will share what they’ve learned as a cloud provider about selecting the right type of tool for different types of applications.

3. Navisite, an award-winning Managed Cloud Service Provider
20+ years
850+
1550+
delivering managed services to enterprise
employees
IT Certifications 7
Thousands
Tens of thousands
data centers worldwide
of client engagements worldwide
of Virtual Machines under management
Award winning cloud & strategic partners
Award-winning cloud & strategic partners
CRN 2018 Coolest Cloud Vendor
Talking Cloud
100 cloud services providers
Navisite has a long history of providing managed services and manages 7 data centers across the US and UK. Navisite was one of the first VMware cloud providers and launched our first VMware based cloud services in Navisite has been a long-time partner of Microsoft’s with a significant number of Microsoft certifications held by our staff and in 2016 we launched managed services for the Microsoft Azure cloud. We’ve got great recognition from analysts (a history of multiple MQ listings and recognition), and the media and partners consistently giving us awards. Navisite also selects the best solution sin each of the ecosystems we need to support our products including: Commavault (backup), Zerto (replication), Cisco (Networking & SDN), BMC, and many more.

4. What are disasters and how do we plan?
Natural Disaster
Single Server Failure
User Error
Malware
The traditional DR strategy where all workloads can be and must be failed over together.
When insufficient redundancy exists at the primary site, it may be necessary to only run a few machines at the recovery site.
A user accidentally deletes system files or applies a bad software update that can’t be backed out quickly.
Ransomware attack that scrambles all files or disables access. Requires quick access to multiple copies to find one before the infection occurred.

5. DR solutions: How far we’ve come
Backups taken once a day in a series of full and incremental
Tapes sent offsite via a courier to a secure location
In case of disaster, tapes need to be returned and then loaded one at a time.
RPO typically 24 hours, RTO measured in hours or days
Tape Backups
Replication occurring at the storage level
Requires identical storage arrays, down to the same firmware version.
Target storage array needs to have similar compute to source site.
Comparatively short RTO/RPO, but expensive
Hardware- Level Replication

6. DR to the cloud Source Cloud More Economical Better Performance
Only pay for resources consumed, when they are consumed
No costs of maintaining a second site
Better Performance
Replication tools provide RPOs measured in minutes
Virtualization allows for disparate HW at each location

7. Spectrum of solutions Coverage based on need
Short RTO / RPO Long
Active / Active Applications
Active / Passive Applications
Hypervisor Replication Tools
OS Replication Tools
Backups
Assistance with design and implementation of applications in a geo-redundant fashion.
Use of application level tools to keep second site up to date as quickly as possible
Tools and methodologies for the continual and coordinated replication of all the VMs in an application for consistent recovery
Tools and methodologies for batched replication of individual physical or virtual workloads
Long term retention of data taken at infrequent (daily) intervals with long RTO and RPOs
Fully managed Oracle, Managed Microsoft Dynamics
SQL log shipping, native AD replication
Zerto, vCloud Availability, or Azure Site Recovery
Double Take, Azure Site Recovery
Commvault, HPDP, Carbonite/eVault

8. Zerto and vCloud Availability
Similarities
Both platforms:
Replicate from a VMware environment at a customer premise to NCD.
Operate at the hypervisor level, so no agent is required within a guest OS.
Replicate the entire VM. Individual folders and files cannot be omitted.
Are self-service from the customer premise. Management may come later via a professional services offering.
Allow for failover testing without interrupting the production environment.
Bill on a per-VM basis along with a charge for storage and any outbound bandwidth. CPU and memory are billed hourly during failovers.

9. Zerto and vCloud Availability
Differences
Feature
vCAv
Zerto
RPO – Data Replication window
5 min-24 hours
Seconds
Tenants On-Premises Deployment Method
Software already integrated into vSphere
VM appliance downloaded and installed in vSphere environment
Self-Service Protection
Failover, failover test, and failback per VM
Restore Points
Up to 24 previous
Up to 4 hours worth
Tenant UI
Integrated in vCenter
Via Zerto appliance
Datacenter Connectivity
Direct
VPN
Replication Granularity
Per VM
Per VM and/or Per Virtual Protection Group

10. Use case #1 Requires: Data consistency between different VMs
Three-tier e-commerce application
Requires:
Data consistency between different VMs
Very short RPO
Use Zerto because it:
Provides the ability to group VMs during the replication
Offers continuous replication for the shortest RPOs

11. Use case #2 Requires: Lots of small files on a single VM
File servers
Requires:
Lots of small files on a single VM
Data frequently read, but rarely written
Use vCloud Availability because:
Hypervisor-level replication is more efficient than an agent within the OS
No need for orchestration between VMs

12. Use case #3 VMware shop Attributes:
Strong VMware expertise and integration with vRealize Orchestration
Small or non-existent networking team
Use vCloud Availability because:
No VPN or dedicated connectivity is required
Replication of multiple VMs can be coordinated through vRealize Orchestrator or other existing tools
vCloud Availability integration with the overall tool stack

13. Use case #4
Aversion to vendor lock-in
Requires:
Disparate software platforms and hosting providers
Long term plans to move into public cloud
Use Zerto because it:
Replicates to a second private location, a VMware cloud provider, AWS, or Azure as needed
Allows for replication to multiple sites, reducing dependence on a single provider, or to migrate to a new provider

14. Best practices Test versus live failover Connectivity Active Directory
Failover VPNs or dedicated lines for live failover
Isolated replicated AD server during testing so as not to update the enterprise directory
Terminal servers or client VPNs for test failovers
Separate AD server continually updated for AD replication in case of live failover

15. Takeaways
Using the cloud as a target reduces costs and creates more flexibility.
Disasters come in all shapes and sizes, be ready for as many as you can.
There is no perfect tool for everyone, but there are some attributes that make one fit better than another.
All tools are only effective when used in the right architecture. Plan yours out to address tests, as well as live failovers.

16. Navisite’s Disaster Recovery Cloud
Full-spectrum resources for comprehensive business continuity protection
Learn more about Navisite’s Disaster Recovery Cloud - protection-replication-solutions Check out our technical blog for helpful DR how-to’s -