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 2019 planning and configuration consulting, 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.

Other High Availability Technologies Provided by Progent's Experts
Progent's Microsoft and Cisco engineers can assist your business to build an efficient, high-availability system that resolves major issues covering a broad array of networking solutions and operations such as:

Disaster Recovery Planning
Progent's disaster recovery professionals can show you how to design a business continuity strategy that will allow you to resume IT operations in case of an IT system catastrophe. Progent can assist you to create a complete disaster recovery strategy that includes periodic disaster recovery evaluations and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-authorized consultants can also show you how to build an affordable, non-stop network solution that takes into account availability issues covering a wide array of infrastructure technologies and processes. For more information, visit Business Continuity Consulting.

Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services
ProSight Data Protection Services provide small and mid-sized organizations a low cost end-to-end solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery. For a low monthly rate, ProSight Data Protection Services automates your backup processes and enables fast restoration of vital files, applications and VMs that have become lost or corrupted as a result of component breakdowns, software bugs, natural disasters, human mistakes, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight DPS can help you back up, retrieve and restore files, folders, apps, system images, as well as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Important data can be backed up on the cloud, to a local storage device, or to both. Progent's backup and recovery specialists can deliver world-class expertise to set up ProSight Data Protection Services to be compliant with government and industry regulatory requirements like HIPPA, FIRPA, and PCI and, when needed, can help you to recover your critical data. Read more about ProSight Data Protection Services Managed Cloud Backup and Recovery.

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 system based on Microsoft's latest 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 enterprise-class storage clusters using low-cost equipment, VM Load Balancing for improving the speed and fault-tolerance of Failover Clusters while reducing capital investment and operational expenses, and Cloud Witness for fast, economical deployment of a stretch cluster quorum witness. For more information, go to Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support.

Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 brought world-class fault tolerance and system recovery to Microsoft's failover clustering solution. Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on this foundation and delivers significant enhancements offering more scalability, non-stop disk storage uptime for server applications, streamlined administration, faster failover, and additional flexibility for designing failover clusters. For more information, see Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering Consulting Services.

NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Software
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery platform that uses failover storage clustering along with synchronous replication to provide fast, zero RPO disaster recovery (DR) between sites located as far as 300km apart from each other. Progent can provide the skills of a NetApp MetroCluster expert who can assist your business to plan, configure, manage, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to select an architecture for your MetroCluster environment that aligns with your functional needs and IT budget. Progent can make sure you follow best practices for installing your MetroCluster environment by delivering help with procedures such as assigning shelf IDs, arranging plexes layout, provisioning NetApp FlexVol volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, provisioning switches, designing a tiebreaker mechanism, designing a configuration replication network, and verifying your disaster recovery system to prove adherence with industry standards and regulatory mandates.

High Availability Load Balancing
Progent provides fault tolerant load balancing support that addresses network load balancing, load balanced programs, network infrastructure routing, and content dispatching technology including Cisco Content Engine. High availability load balancing products for which Progent can provide consulting expertise include Windows 2003 and 2008 Server Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Metaframe and Presentation Server, Cisco Content Services Switch, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and Cisco CDN Software, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. To learn more, see Fault Tolerant Load Balancing.

Zero Downtime Colocation
Progent's Data Center engineers can help you identify zero-downtime data centers that match the particular needs of your company. Fault tolerant colocation sites are especially attractive to small and mid-size businesses due to of their low cost and simplified logistics compared to pursuing a do-it-yourself strategy. Attempting to build an in-house data center with even a minimum degree of fault tolerance is too expensive for typical small businesses. Progent is ready to help you reap all the advantages of high-availability colocation centers by providing a full range of consulting and support services. For details, go to Non-stop Data Centers Expertise.

High-Availability Interoffice Connectivity
Progent’s interoffice connection consultants can help organizations create fault tolerant branch office connectivity via redundant system architectures with transparent failover. Progent’s Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers can design and deploy ultra-reliable Inter-office networks based on zero-downtime EIGRP network routers or fault tolerant OSPF deployment of Cisco routers. Progent can show you how redundant connections and transparent fail-over can provide economical non-stop interoffice connectivity. To learn more, go to Non-stop Interoffice Connectivity.

24x7 Internet Connectivity
Progent's Cisco-authorized IT experts can show you how to build an economical, high availability Internet connection architecture that can deliver non-stop Internet connectivity via a broad range of fault tolerant Internet access technologies including fault tolerant BGP, automatic fail-over, and redundant Internet Service Providers. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert engineers to show you how to apply the most up-to-date techniques for fault tolerant Internet connectivity to build a cost-effective, fully redundant Internet interface with automatic failover and other features to create non-stop Internet connections. To find out more, see 24x7 Internet Connectivity Architecture.

Backup and Restore Solutions Consulting and Support Services
Progent offers economical remote access to engineers with expertise in a broad range of products and technologies that deliver solutions for protecting Windows, Mac, and Linux servers and workstations as well as notebooks and smartphones. Progent offers consulting support for leading backup products including Acronis, Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan PRO, Double-Take, MozyPro, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery, and Oracle Solaris FLARs. Progent can help you to design, enhance, or maintain backup/restore solutions for a range of topologies including local, edge to datacenter, cloud, or hybrid. For details, go to Backup and Recovery Solutions Consulting.

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) Data Recovery Consulting Experts
Progent's certified Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager support professionals can help you to develop a practical disaster recovery plan, implement an affordable high-availability network infrastructure, install a Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager-powered backup and restore solution, thoroughly validate your system, educate your IT personnel or local service providers how to maintain Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, or provide complete IT support outsourcing such as remote hosting of Microsoft SCDPM machines in Progent's secure data center. To learn more, visit Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Expertise.

Barracuda Backup Cloud and Offsite Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is an affordable, subscription-based backup/restore service for small and medium-size organizations. A Barracuda Backup deployment can incorporate a purpose-built physical storage device built by Barracuda or a virtual appliance with comparable features but which utilizes your own storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup safeguards critical company data produced on-premises, at one or multiple remote locations, or in the cloud. For disaster recovery, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon AWS, or to any site with a Barracuda appliance. Progent is a Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts can provide a wide range of consulting services to assist you to plan, configure, manage and troubleshoot a BDR system built on Barracuda technology. For more information, go to Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consultants.

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 platform for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-powered virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup can be deployed in local, offsite, distributed, and cloud environments and also supports cost-effective cloud backup to Azure storage. Top capabilities include state-of-the-art inline deduplication to cut backup storage needs, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing as short as five minutes for reducing your exposure to data loss, military-grade encryption, item-level restore capability for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows CSV and vCenter for handling large-scale environments, and the ability to leverage Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to back up online VMs without downtime. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and can provide a wide array of consulting services to help you to design, deploy, optimize and troubleshoot a backup/restore system powered by Altaro VM Backup. To learn more, visit Altaro VM Backup Certified Consultants.

Consulting Services Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup
Double-Take Software publishes a family of tools intended to provide small companies a variety of affordable solutions for replicating and restoring vital applications including Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, RIM Blackberry, and Microsoft Office SharePoint. Progent’s business continuity planning consultants have in-depth backgrounds incorporating Double-Take Software products into small company IT systems to create a high level of availability and business continuity readiness at a budget-friendly price. To read more, see Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup.

CRISC-Certified IT Risk Control
The CRISC program was established by ISACA to validate an IT professional's ability to design, deploy, and support IS control mechanisms to mitigate network risk. Progent offers the expertise of a CRISC-certified engineer to help your company to develop and carry out a business continuity or disaster recovery strategy based on industry best practices identified by CRISC and geared to align with your company's risk tolerance, business objectives, and budgetary guidelines. To find out more, go to CRISC-Certified network risk control specialists.

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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