VMware's popular Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is an extension to VMware vCenter that allows you to orchestrate, automate and test a consistent process for restoring services rapidly after an outage. SRM provides centrally managed and automated disaster recovery, application mobility, plus non-disruptive site migration, failback and re-protect. SRM also allows non-disruptive testing for disaster recovery, upgrades and patches and can generate audit reports to confirm complete service restoration, validate SLAs and prove compliance.
Site Recovery Manager works natively with VMware vSphere Replication, can be used with third-party disaster recovery solutions from leading storage vendors like NetApp, and integrates with Microsoft software products for advanced, application-aware data protection. SRM's support for automated, single-click orchestration of failover and failback processes allows you to minimize Recovery Time Objective (RTO). SRM's support for array-based synchronous replication enables zero-data-loss Recovery Point Objective (RPO) at metro distances. Combined with VMware's NSX network virtualization platform, SRM can recover the entire logical network topology at the recovery site.
Progent can provide the support of a certified VMware VCDX consultant to help you plan, deploy, test and manage a disaster recovery solution based on VMware Site Recovery Manager and NSX. Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server 2022 integration professionals, Windows Server 2019 integration experts, and Windows Server 2016 consultants can help you set up SRM on Windows Server at the protected site and the recovery site and can also help you configure mission-critical applications by providing services such as Exchange Server 2019 planning and configuration consulting, Exchange Server 2016 migration, SQL Server 2019 migration consulting, SQL Server 2017 upgrade expertise, and SQL Server 2016 integration consulting. Progent's Cisco CCIE consultants can help you design and deploy a robust network infrastructure for Site Recovery Manager, and Progent can provide a NetApp-certified SAN storage expert to help you integrate a NetApp clustered storage solution with SRM.
Key Features of VMware Site Recovery Manager
VMware Site Recovery Manager servers and VMware vCenter servers, running at the protected and recovery sites in conjunction with VMware vSphere and hosted by Microsoft Windows Server, work together to ensure that recovery virtual machines (VMs) are immediately and transparently started up when protected VMs are shut down. The virtual machines at the recovery site use the data replicated from the protected site and are therefore able to continue providing the same services.
SRM's migration of data and services between the protected and recovery sites is controlled by a recovery plan, an automated runbook that defines the order in which VMs are shut down and started up, their allocated resource pools, and the networks the VMs can access. You can configure multiple recovery plans to orchestrate recovery scenarios for specific applications or to handle entire sites. You can centrally manage VMware SRM recovery plans via the vSphere Web Client.
In addition to providing a strong disaster recovery solution to protect against unplanned downtime, VMware SRM also allows non-disruptive execution of planned processes such as disaster avoidance in anticipation of a major storm, moving a datacenter to a new location, testing upgrades and patches, testing a recovery plan to demonstrate compliance, and failback/re-protect after a partial or complete site shutdown. If your protected and recovery sites have a high-bandwidth, low-latency connection within a metro area, you can use array-based storage and synchronous replication with zero data loss (RPO) and rapid recovery time (RTO).
Site Recovery Manager can be configured in a variety of topologies to support different failover scenarios. In an Active-Passive configuration, a production site runs applications and services and a fully-provisioned secondary site waits unused until it is needed for recovery. This traditional topology is quickly falling out of favor because of its low utilization of IT resources. In an Active-Active topology, less urgent workloads such as testing or development are run at the secondary site until the recovery plan calls for them to be shut down to make room for critical workloads following outage. This allows the recovery site to stay productive. In a Bi-directional deployment, production workloads can be run at two sites which Site Recovery Manager will use as mutual protection and recovery sites. If either sites fails, SRM will activate its workloads on the surviving site.
VMware Site Recovery Manager also supports stretched storage clusters that span protected and recovery sites. Stretched clusters allow you to migrate workloads between two geographically proximate sites to balance services without downtime. This combination of technologies delivers the disaster recovery orchestration, automation, and audit reporting capability of SRM plus the ability of stretched clusters to enable fully active datacenters with on-demand, non-disruptive workload balancing.
Additional topologies supported by VMware Site Recovery Manager include shared recovery, where multiple remote sites such as branch offices are protected by the same recovery site, and shared protection, where a single site fails over some applications and VMs to one recovery site and others to one or more other recovery sites. All of the various architectural alternatives for deploying a disaster recovery solution based on VMware SRM have inherent advantages and problems and range in complexity from simple to very challenging. Progent can provide the support of an VMware VCDX-certified expert who can clarify the issues, recommend a topology that fits your organization's technical requirements and IT budget, and provide as-needed guidance and support to help you implement and manage your disaster recovery solution.
Combining Site Recovery Manager and VMware NSX
Because the IP address of a running virtual machine cannot be altered without incurring some downtime, protected sites and recovery sites supported by VMware Site Recovery Manager must have L2 network connectivity to achieve the fastest possible failover time. One way to accomplish this is through VMware's NSX network virtualization platform. The network virtualization provided with VMware NSX makes it possible to preserve L2 and recover the entire logical network topology at the recovery site. NSX also supports APIs for automating recovery at the network layer to optimize RPO and RTO. By combining NSX with a disaster recovery solution based on VMware Site Recovery Manager, you can streamline the recovery of critical networking services at the secondary site including logical switches, distributed logical routers, and distributed firewall (DFW) policies.
For seamless spanning of network and security policies across multiple sites you can use an external replication/synchronization technology like vRO (vRealize Orchestrator, formerly called vCenter Orchestrator), or you can use the Cross-VC feature of VMware NSX. Cross vCenter NSX simplifies the process of deploying Universal Logical Switches, Universal Distributed Logical Router, and Universal Distributed Firewall to create a single unified logical network (L2, L3, DFW) across the protected and recovery site. This permits rapid failover and recovery without requiring you to re-create the network on the recovery site or manually map and remap IP addresses.
Progent can provide the services of a VMware-certified NSX expert to help you integrate VMware Site Recovery Manager with VMware NSX and to configure a disaster recovery solution automated by vRO or Cross vCenter NSX.
How Progent Can Help You with VMware Site Recovery Manager
Progent can provide online or onsite access to a VMware VCDX-certified subject matter expert with world-class knowledge and experience deploying and configuring VMware Site Recovery Manager and VMware's NSX network virtualization platform for disaster recovery and business continuity. Progent offers expert understanding of VMware vCloud Director (vCD), VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) and vCloud Suite used for managing private and hybrid cloud environments that feature high availability, fault tolerance, and application continuity. Progent has expertise with VMware vSAN native-vSphere storage, EMC VNX and VMAX storage systems, Dell EqualLogic storage arrays, NetApp's SAN storage product family, plus storage solutions from Pure Storage and Tintri. Progent also offers advanced consulting for underlying storage technologies including RAID, JBOD, ZFS, VMFS, Fibre Channel (FC), NFS, and iSCSI plus key network technologies including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, LACP, OSPF, and BGP.
Progent's VCDX-certified VMware Site Recovery Manager and NSX subject matter expert has worked with datacenter architects, network engineers and department directors of some of the world's largest technology companies, major financial institutions, and government agencies to design solutions to improve disaster recovery RPO and RTO. Experience with large-scale projects includes working in environments scaling above 1500 ESXi hosts and 45,000 virtual machines.
Non-stop Technologies Supported by Progent
Progent's certified consultants can help your company to create a sensible, fault-tolerant information network that resolves key challenges encompassing a wide array of infrastructure technologies and processes such as:
Disaster Recovery Planning
Progent's disaster recovery professionals can show you how to create a workplace recovery strategy in order to resume network functionality in the event of an IT system disaster. Progent can assist you to develop a complete disaster recovery strategy that includes scheduled disaster recovery assessments and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified consultants can also show you how to build an affordable, fault-tolerant network solution that takes into account reliability issues involving a wide range of network technologies and procedures. To find out more, go to Workplace Recovery Expertise.
CRISC-Premier Network Risk Mitigation
The CRISC certification program was established by ISACA to verify a consultant's ability to plan, implement, and maintain IS control mechanisms to reduce risk. Progent can provide the services of a CRISC-certified engineer to help you to create and execute a workplace continuity plan that follows industry best practices promoted by CRISC and geared to match your organization's risk tolerance, business goals, and IT budget. For details, go to CRISC-Premier IT risk mitigation experts.
Microsoft Server 2019 High Availability Failover Clustering
Windows Server 2019 introduced important improvements in capacity, performance, manageability, security and compliance, application compatibility, Linux co-existence, Kubernetes technology, and hybrid integration of local and cloud assets. Headline new features of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 include Windows Admin Center for unifying the management and monitoring of hybrid local/cloud-hosted resources, System Insights for utilizing advance predictive analytics to manage on-premises networks, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Exploit Guard for host-intrusion defense, container networking with Kubernetes, Cluster Sets technology for deploying and administering massive non-stop scale-out clusters, and Storage Migration Service for streamlining the upgrade process from outdated releases of Windows Server. To learn more, visit Windows Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering Help.
Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery/business continuity experts can help your organization to design a disaster recovery system based on Microsoft's cloud-tested Failover Clustering technologies including Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-disruptive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for zero-data-loss Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Storage Spaces Direct for high-performance network-attached storage using low-cost equipment, Virtual Machine Load Balancing for improving the speed and fault-tolerance of Failover Clusters while minimizing capital investment and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for easy, economical deployment of a failover cluster quorum witness. For details, go to Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Expertise.
NetApp MetroCluster Disaster Recovery Technology
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery platform that combines array-based storage clustering with synchronous replication to provide rapid, zero data loss disaster recovery (DR) between datacenters located up to 300km apart from each other. Progent offers the skills of a certified NetApp MetroCluster consultant who can assist you to design, deploy, manage, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery system built around NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to select an architecture for your MetroCluster environment that meets your functional requirements and IT budget. Progent can make sure you adhere to best practices for configuring your MetroCluster environment by delivering guidance with tasks such as assigning disk pools, arranging aggregate layout, setting up NetApp FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, installing Cisco and Brocade switches, designing a tiebreaker, designing a configuration replication network, and verifying your MetroCluster disaster recovery system to prove adherence with industry standards and government requirements.
High Availability Load Balancing
Progent provides high availability load balancing support that addresses network load balancing, load balanced programs, network backbone routing, and content dispatching technology including F5 Networks 3DNS. Non-stop load balancing technologies for which Progent can provide consulting expertise include Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Metaframe and Access Gateway, Cisco Content Services Switch, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and ACNS, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. For details, visit Non-stop Load Balancing.
Zero Downtime Colocation
Progent's Data Center professionals can help you find high availability data centers that meet the particular needs of your business. High availability Internet Data Centers are especially appealing to small and mid-size organizations due to of their low cost and simplified logistics in comparison to taking a do-it-yourself strategy. Trying to build an on-site data center with even a basic degree of fault tolerance is too costly for typical small companies. Progent can help you reap all the benefits of 24x7 data centers by providing a complete array of consulting and maintenance services. To find out more, see High-Availability Colocation Consulting.
Failsafe Interoffice Networking
Progent's multi-site connection professionals can help organizations achieve non-stop interoffice connectivity via fully redundant networks with transparent failover. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers can design and deploy fault-tolerant Inter-office networks based on zero-downtime EIGRP routers or non-stop OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can show you how multi-path connectivity and automatic fail-over offers affordable non-stop interoffice networking. To read more, go to Fault Tolerant Interoffice Connectivity.
Non-stop Internet Connections
Progent's Cisco-certified network engineers can show you how to build an affordable, high availability Internet connection architecture that can achieve 24x7 Internet connectivity through a broad range of fault tolerant Internet access technologies including high availability BGP, automatic fail-over, and redundant ISPs. Progent offers CCIE professionals to help you apply the most up-to-date technology for fault tolerant Internet connections to implement an economical, completely redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other features to deliver fault tolerant Internet access. To read more, go to Non-stop Internet Connectivity Architecture.
Backup and Recovery Technology Consulting Experts
Progent offers affordable remote support from consultants with expertise in a broad range of utilities and technologies that provide solutions for protecting Microsoft Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX physical and virtual servers and desktops as well as laptops and handhelds. Progent can provide consulting support for leading data protection platforms such as Acronis Backup and Recovery, Symantec Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan PRO, Double-Take Backup, MozyPro, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery, and FLARs. Progent's consultants can help your company to design, upgrade, or maintain backup solutions for a range of environments including on-premises, remote, cloud-based, or a mix. For details, go to Backup and Recovery Solutions Expertise.
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Backup and Recovery Consultants
Progent's expert System Center Data Protection Manager engineers can assist you to develop a practical disaster recovery plan, implement an affordable high-availability network infrastructure, install a System Center Data Protection Manager-based backup and recovery system, comprehensively validate your system, train your IT staff or local service providers how to manage Microsoft SCDPM, or provide complete information technology support outsourcing such as remote housing of SCDPM servers in Progent's world-class data center facility. For details, go to System Center Data Protection Manager Consulting.
Barracuda Backup On-premises and Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription-based backup/restore service for small and mid-size businesses. A Barracuda Backup deployment can incorporate a custom-designed physical appliance manufactured by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with similar functionality but which utilizes your existing storage hardware. Barracuda Backup protects critical business data produced on-premises, at one or more remote sites, or in the cloud. For disaster preparedness, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon AWS, or to any site with a Barracuda Backup appliance. Progent is a Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts can provide a broad array of consulting support services to help your business to design, integrate, manage and repair a backup and disaster recovery system based on Barracuda technology. For more information, go to Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consultants.
ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup Software for Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software offers small and mid-size businesses a dependable and budget-friendly solution for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup can be used for local, remote, multi-site, and cloud-hosted architectures and also enables cost-effective backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Altaro VM Backup supports high-end capabilities like Immutable Cloud Storage for an extra layer of protection from ransomware. Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a wide array of remote or onsite services to help you to plan, deploy, optimize and troubleshoot a modern backup and disaster recovery solution based on Altaro VM Backup. With ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, Progent delivers a fully managed backup/recovery service powered by on Altaro VM Backup. For more information, see Altaro VM Backup consulting services.
ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup Solutions for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 offers simple archiving but does not include integrated support for key data protection services like Exchange Online backups or greater than 30-day point-in-time recovery for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup delivers a full-featured platform for programmable backup and rapid recovery of all your company's M365 mail, Microsoft Teams Chats, SharePoint sites, OneDrive for Business data, and content on Windows desktops and laptops. Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity/Altaro partner and offers ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup to provide end-to-end managed services for Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup product. ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup provides an affordable backup-as-a-service alternative that defends M365 components against data loss or corruption caused by human or software mistakes, malicious sabotage, and malware attacks such as ransomware. For more information, visit ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup solutions for Microsoft 365.
Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO
ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO provide small and mid-sized organizations an affordable and fully managed solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery. For a low monthly price, ProSight DPS ECHO automates and monitors your backup activities and allow rapid recovery of vital files, applications and virtual machines that have become lost or corrupted as a result of hardware breakdowns, software bugs, natural disasters, human error, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight DPS ECHO can help you protect, retrieve and restore files, folders, apps, system images, as well as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to a local storage device, or mirrored to both. Progent's cloud backup consultants can deliver world-class expertise to set up ProSight DPS ECHO to to comply with regulatory standards such as HIPAA, FIRPA, and PCI and, whenever needed, can help you to restore your critical data. Find out more about ProSight DPS ECHO managed cloud backup and recovery.
ProSight DPS 360 Backup Services
Progent's data protection experts can help your company to design, implement and debug a backup/restore plan built around MSP360 technology. MSP360 offers file/folder or image backup/recovery for virtual machines and physical computers, works with all popular public clouds, and permits you to create a backup ecosystem with a minimum Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and a granular Recovery Point Objective. With ProSight DPS 360 Backup, Progent can provide end-to-end monitoring and remote management of your backup environment to protect against data loss resulting from human mistakes, computer errors, ill-intentioned users, and external assaults such as ransomware. To read more, see ProSight DPS 360 Backup services.
Consulting Services Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup/Restore
Double-Take offers a selection of tools designed to deliver small companies a range of affordable alternatives for replicating and restoring business-critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, RIM Blackberry, and SharePoint. Progent's disaster recovery planning experts have in-depth backgrounds incorporating Double-Take Software technology into small business information systems to achieve an advanced level of fault tolerance and business continuity readiness at an affordable cost. To read more, go to Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup.
Why Choose Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning?
Because Progent is a Microsoft Partner and provides high-level application support for a broad range of business software programs, Progent is able to assist clients to arrive at efficient information technology solutions that maximize the productivity of your network. As a Registered Partner for Cisco, Progent offers the expertise of certified consultants and specialists with experience in designing, deploying and managing networking solutions built on Cisco technology. The extent of Progent's IT know-how and Progent's familiarity with the requirements of small companies make Progent a great partner for creating and running a cost-effective, fault-tolerant information system.
Contact Progent for Help with VMware SRM Disaster Recovery Solutions
For more information about Progent's consulting services for VMware Site Recovery Manager, call