Site Recovery Manager, a pioneering new product from VMware for disaster recovery management and automation is available to order and will ship in June, the company announced. VMware also released two new product bundles from its suite of management and automation data center products.
VMware Site Recovery Manager, part of VMware's suite of management and automation products, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery, the company says.
Some traditional recovery plans leave organizations exposed to significant risk of extended downtime if they are laborious to set up, time-consuming to maintain, and difficult to test, according to VMware. As a result, only a subset of important systems can be adequately protected, the company says. For example, traditional disaster recovery plans for data centers require extensive documentation consisting of hundreds of pages of instructions contained in run books that are nearly impossible to keep accurate and up-to-date, says the company. The complexity of the manual recovery processes in these run books makes it difficult for organizations to reliably recover within their recovery-time objectives, according to VMware. Traditional non-virtualized systems have extensive dependencies on hardware configurations, which make consistent automation of the process extremely difficult if not impossible, the company says.
"Effective disaster recovery has been a significant challenge for many organizations," says Raghu Raghuram, VMware vice president of products and solutions. "With the delivery of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware removes hurdles associated with disaster recovery planning and implementation. Through our innovative disaster recovery testing, management, and automation capabilities, we bring predictability back into the hands of IT and help eliminate risks associated with human error."
Site Recovery Manager works seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure, VMware VirtualCenter, and replication software from storage partners to provide integrated disaster recovery management and automation. It provides:
· Integrated management of disaster recovery plans
o Users create, update, and document recovery plans directly from VMware VirtualCenter.
· Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans.
o Users execute automated tests of recovery plans in an isolated testing environment using the recovery plan that would be used in an actual fail-over. Hardware configuration dependencies are eliminated and testing can occur without impacting production systems.
· Automated failover and recovery.
o Users can automate the execution of the recovery process, eliminating many of the slow and unreliable manual processes common in traditional disaster recovery.
"Regulatory compliance and our drive for providing exceptional services to our customers is a large factor for our interest and involvement in VMware Site Recovery Manager," says Donald Wilkins, director of IT at Navicure, Inc. "Site Recovery Manager allows us to far exceed our recovery objectives in an automated manner and lets our IT staff do disaster recovery the right way-the only way."
"Brit Insurance chose VMware Site Recovery Manager after evaluating the advantages offered by centralized management and complete automation of disaster recovery plans over physical alternatives," said Brett Hockly, group infrastructure services manager at Brit Insurance. "As a long-term VMware virtualization user, our team is clear on the benefits of virtual infrastructure, having a disaster recovery solution we can test without jeopardizing our live systems makes our decision to standardize on VMware clearly correct."
VMware Site Recovery Manager leverages customers' investment in storage replication software from VMware's leading storage partners including 3PAR, Dell, EMC, FalconStor, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks and NetApp. VMware is working with partners across its storage partner ecosystem to ensure that customers can use Site Recovery Manager with their storage system and software platform of choice, the company said As a result of this collaboration, customers can confidently and easily deploy advanced disaster recovery solutions with the full support of both VMware and their storage provider, the company said. For comments from partners about VMware Site Recovery Manager, visit www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/srm_partner_support.html.
VMware Site Recovery Manager can be purchased independently and is also included in the VMware Management and Automation Bundle.
Management and Automation Bundles
VMware announced two new bundles of its suite of management and automation products for data centers including the VMware IT Service Delivery Bundle and the VMware Lifecyle Manager and either VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager.
The VMware IT Service Delivery Bundle includes all the products needed to automate the lifecycle of IT services, from initial request to final retirement: VMware Lifecycle Manager and either VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager use virtualization to provide a more cost effective and powerful way to manage the entire software lifecycle. In particular, they enable user self-provisioning of virtual machines, give IT departments complete control of virtual machine environments, and provide the application owners with application release management.
The new bundle will significantly enhance the productivity of and empower application developers, testers, and IT administrators by helping to manage virtual machine sprawl; quickly and conveniently build and deploy new environments; and deploy new services with minimal risk through the constancy of the development, test, staging, and deployment environments and the ability to specify and automate the rules around these processes.
The VMware Management and Automation Bundle provides a single package for addressing both IT service delivery and business continuity. It includes VMware Lifecycle Manager, VMware Lab Manager, VMware Stage Manager, plus VMware Site Recovery Manager, a significant improvement over traditional tools for disaster recovery configuration, testing, and management.
A recent IDC study found that 80 percent of those surveyed believe that virtualization improves their ability to manage and deliver IT services (IDC VM Infrastructure Multi-Client Study, 2007).
VMware virtual machines encapsulate applications and operating systems in standardized, hardware-independent packages that can be easily changed, moved and manipulated. VMware's new portfolio of management and automation products leverage virtual machines to automate the steps of the IT service delivery and business continuity processes, eliminating repetitive tasks and minimizing risk. This automation results in scalable, repeatable, and efficient IT processes.
"VMware is unmatched in both our vision and our capabilities for automating the virtual data center," said Raghuram. "With our broadening range of management and automation products and new cost-effective bundles, our customers are now able to automate data center processes in ways that just aren't possible with physical infrastructure, resulting in a data center that is more efficient and agile."
"The next step for virtualization clearly centers around automating IT processes," said Stephen Elliot, research director at IDC. "It is no secret in the IT industry that the real cost of IT is the ongoing management, simply keeping the lights on. This is where IT is currently spending their time and effort. After having delivered significant cost savings through consolidation, the automation of both IT processes and technology tasks can help IT departments extricate themselves from the tactical, rote tasks and focus where they can have a real strategic impact."
Availability, Packaging and Pricing
The IT Service Delivery Bundle includes:
· VMware Lifecycle Manager, which allows companies to implement a consistent and automated process for requesting, approving, deploying, updating, and retiring virtual machines, and gives customers the choice of either, VMware Lab Manager, which provides fast and simple self-service provisioning of multi-tier virtual machine-based environments or VMware Stage Manager, which streamlines and accelerates the application change, configuration and release management cycle. The IT Service Delivery Bundle is priced at $2,995 per 2 processors.
· The Management and Automation Bundle includes the IT Service Delivery Bundle and VMware Site Recovery Manager, which provides integrated disaster recovery management and automation. The Management and Automation bundle is priced at $3,995 per 2 processors.
The products and bundles will be available through VMware's network of distributors, resellers, and OEMs starting May 19. The products are also available separately. The prices provided above are VMware list prices.
For more information on VMware management and automation portfolio of products, visit http://www.vmware.com/products/management_automation.html.
About VMware
VMware is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the data center. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security, and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 100,000 customers and nearly 14,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., and on the Web at http://www.vmware.com/.
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