VMware Site Recovery Manager ConsultantsVMware'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 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 2016 migration, SQL Server 2017 migration consulting, 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).

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Consulting

VMware Site Recovery Manager can eliminate planned downtime and data loss

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.

VMware Site Recovery Manager Topology Consultants

VMware Site Recovery Manager supports multiple topologies including stretched clusters

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.

VMware NSX and SRM Disaster Recovery Consultants

Combining VMware SRM with NSX and Cross vCenter NSX can dramatically improve RPO and RTO

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.

Additional Fault Tolerant Technologies Offered by Progent
Progent's Microsoft and Cisco engineers can assist your company to build an affordable, high-availability network that addresses key problems encompassing a wide array of networking technologies and processes such as:

Workplace Recovery Planning
Progent's disaster recovery consultants can help you design a disaster recovery strategy in order to resume IT operations in case of an IT network disaster. Progent can assist you to create a comprehensive disaster recovery plan that incorporates scheduled disaster recovery evaluations and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified engineers can also help you build an affordable, fault-tolerant network architecture that addresses reliability issues covering a wide range of network technologies and procedures. To find out more, see Disaster Recovery Consulting Services.

Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services
ProSight Data Protection Services provide small and mid-sized organizations an affordable and fully managed solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery. For a low monthly price, ProSight DPS automates your backup processes and enables fast recovery of critical data, applications and VMs that have become lost or corrupted as a result of hardware failures, software bugs, natural disasters, human error, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services can help you back up, retrieve and restore files, folders, applications, system images, as well as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to an on-promises device, or to both. Progent's BDR specialists can provide advanced expertise to configure ProSight DPS to be compliant with regulatory standards like HIPPA, FIRPA, PCI and Safe Harbor and, when needed, can assist you to restore your critical data. Read more about ProSight DPS Managed Backup.

Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery experts can help you to design a disaster recovery solution built around Microsoft's cloud-tested Failover Clustering tools such as Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-intrusive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for crash-consistent recovery, Storage Spaces Direct for high-performance storage clusters using industry-standard equipment, VM Load Balancing for enhancing the performance and fault-tolerance of Failover Clusters while minimizing capital investment and operational expenses, and Cloud Witness for easy, affordable deployment of a failover cluster quorum arbitration point. For more information, see Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support.

Microsoft Server 2012 Failover Clusters
Windows Server 2008 R2 introduced enterprise-class fault tolerance and recoverability to Microsoft's clustering solution. Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on this foundation and provides significant new and enhanced features that offer increased expandability, non-stop storage uptime for server applications, streamlined management, quicker failover, and additional flexibility for architecting clusters. For details, see Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering Integration.

NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Technology
NetApp MetroCluster is a high-availability and disaster recovery platform that uses array-based storage clustering with replication to deliver rapid, zero data loss disaster recovery (DR) between datacenters located up to 185 miles (300km) away from one another. Progent offers online or on-premises access to a NetApp MetroCluster expert who can help your business to design, configure, administer, update, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery system built around NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can assist you to choose a topology for your MetroCluster deployment that aligns with your technical requirements and budget. Progent can ensure you adhere to leading practices for configuring your MetroCluster solution by delivering help with tasks such as assigning disk pools, determining aggregate layout, setting up FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, installing Cisco and Brocade switches, designing a tiebreaker mechanism, designing a configuration replication network between your peered clusters, and verifying your MetroCluster DR system to show compliance with information assurance standards and regulatory requirements.

Fault Tolerant Load Balancing
Progent provides high availability load balancing support covering network load balancing, load balanced programs, LAN/WAN backbone routing, and content dispatching technology such as Cisco Content Engine. Fault tolerant load balancing products for which Progent offers consulting services include Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Access Gateway, Cisco CSS, Cisco Content Engine and LocalDirector 400 series, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. For more information, visit Non-stop Load Balancing.

High-Availability Internet Data Centers
Progent's Data Center professionals can help you find fault-tolerant data centers that match the particular requirements of your company. High availability Internet Data Centers are particularly appealing to small and mid-size businesses because of their affordability and simplified logistics compared to pursuing a do-it-yourself approach. Attempting to build an in-house data center that offers even a basic degree of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for the majority of small businesses. Progent can show you how to reap all the advantages of non-stop colo sites by providing a complete array of engineering and maintenance services. For details, visit Non-stop Colocation Solutions.

24x7 Branch Office Connectivity
Progent’s interoffice network infrastructure professionals can help companies achieve non-stop multi-site connectivity via redundant system architectures featuring automatic failover. Progent’s Cisco-premier CCIE engineers can design and deploy high-availability Inter-office connections supported by non-stop EIGRP network routers or fault tolerant OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connections and transparent fail-over can provide economical 24x7 interoffice networking. To learn more, go to Non-stop Interoffice Networking.

Fault Tolerant Internet Connections
Progent's Cisco-certified IT engineers can help you build an affordable, high availability Internet configuration solution that can deliver 24x7 Internet connectivity through a wide range of high availability Internet network technologies including non-stop BGP, transparent fail-over, and multiple ISPs. Progent can provide Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert engineers to help you utilize the most advanced technology for 24x7 Internet access to build an economical, fully redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other features to create fault tolerant Internet availability. To read more, go to Fault Tolerant Internet Access Solutions.

Backup and Recovery Solutions Consulting Experts
Progent offers economical online support from engineers skilled in a wide array of products and technologies that deliver solutions for backing up Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux/UNIX servers and desktops plus notebooks and smartphones. Progent can provide consulting support for leading data protection platforms such as Acronis, Backup Exec, BackupAssist, CrashPlan, Double-Take Backup, MozyPro, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery (VDR), and Oracle Solaris FLARs. Progent can assist your company to deploy, enhance, or troubleshoot data backup solutions for a range of environments such as on-premises, edge to datacenter, cloud, or hybrid. To learn more, go to Backup and Restore Solutions Consulting Services.

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Backup and Recovery Consulting Services
Progent's certified Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager engineers can assist your company to create a practical business continuity plan, design an affordable high-availability network infrastructure, deploy a Microsoft SCDPM-powered backup and restore system, thoroughly test your DPM system, train your administrative staff or local consultants how to maintain Microsoft SCDPM, or provide complete information technology outsourcing services such as remote housing of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager servers in Progent's data center. For more information, visit Microsoft SCDPM Expertise.

Barracuda Backup On-premises and Cloud Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is an affordable, subscription-based backup and disaster recovery platform for small and medium-size organizations. A Barracuda Backup deployment can include a custom-designed hardware storage device built by Barracuda or a virtual appliance with similar features but which utilizes your existing storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup safeguards critical business data generated locally, at one or more remote sites, or in the cloud. For disaster recovery, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon AWS, or to any location with a physical or virtual Barracuda appliance. Progent is a certified Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consultants can provide a wide range of consulting support services to help your business to design, configure, operate and repair a backup and disaster recovery solution based on Barracuda Backup. For details, go to Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting and management.

Altaro VM Backup Software for Backup and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software provides small and mid-size organizations a reliable and affordable platform for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be deployed in on-premises, remote, multi-site, and cloud-hosted environments and also enables cost-effective cloud backup to Azure Block Blob storage. Top features include industry-leading inline deduplication to reduce backup storage requirements, Continuous Data Protection with backup spacing as little as five minutes for minimizing your Recovery Point Objective, military-grade encryption, granular restore options for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows CSV and VMware vCenter for handling larger environments, and the ability to leverage Microsoft VSS technology to back up online virtual machines with zero downtime. Progent is an Altaro partner and can provide a broad range of services to assist you to design, install, optimize and troubleshoot a backup and disaster recovery system powered by Altaro VM Backup software. To learn more, go to Altaro VM Backup Consulting.

Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup/Restore
Double-Take offers a family of tools intended to provide small and midsize businesses a range of cost-effective alternatives for replicating and recovering business-critical applications including Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, Blackberry, and Microsoft Office SharePoint. Progent’s disaster recovery planning consultants have in-depth experience incorporating Double-Take Software technology into small company IT systems to create a high level of availability and business continuity capability at an affordable cost. For details, see Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup.

CRISC-Premier IT Risk Mitigation
The Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) program was established by ISACA to verify a consultant's skills to plan, implement, and support information system controls to reduce network risk. Progent can provide the expertise of a CRISC-certified consultant to help your company to develop and carry out a business continuity plan based on industry best practices identified by CRISC and crafted to align with your company's risk appetite, business objectives, and budgetary guidelines. To learn more, see CRISC-Premier network risk control experts.

Contact Progent for Help with VMware SRM Disaster Recovery Solutions
For more information about Progent's consulting services for VMware Site Recovery Manager, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

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