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.

Other Fault Tolerant Technologies Supported by Progent's Consultants
Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified consultants can assist your company to create an efficient, fault-tolerant system that addresses key problems covering a broad range of networking solutions and processes including:

Disaster Recovery Planning
Progent's disaster recovery consultants can show you how to create a business continuity plan that will allow you to restore network operations in case of an IT network disaster. Progent can help you to define a complete disaster recovery strategy that incorporates scheduled disaster recovery evaluations and testing. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified professionals can also help you create an affordable, zero-downtime network architecture that takes into account reliability issues involving a wide array of infrastructure technologies and procedures. To find out more, go to Disaster Recovery Consulting and Support Services.

Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services
ProSight Data Protection Services from Progent provide small and mid-sized businesses a low cost end-to-end solution for reliable backup/disaster recovery. For a fixed monthly rate, ProSight Data Protection Services automates your backup processes and allows fast restoration of critical data, applications and virtual machines that have become lost or damaged due to hardware failures, software bugs, natural disasters, human error, or malware attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services can help you protect, recover and restore files, folders, apps, system images, plus Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware images/. Critical data can be protected on the cloud, to a local storage device, or to both. Progent's cloud backup specialists can deliver advanced expertise to set up ProSight DPS to to comply with government and industry regulatory standards like HIPPA, FINRA, and PCI and, when necessary, can assist you to restore your critical information. Learn more about ProSight Data Protection Services Managed Backup and Recovery.

Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery/business continuity consultants can help your organization to plan and deploy a DR system based on Microsoft's cloud-tested Failover Clustering technologies such as Cluster Operating System Rolling Upgrade for non-intrusive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for crash-consistent Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Storage Spaces Direct for enterprise-class storage clusters using commodity equipment, Virtual Machine Load Balancing for enhancing the speed and resilience of Failover Clusters while reducing TCO and operational expenses, and Cloud Witness for fast, economical creation of a stretch cluster quorum witness. To learn more, go to Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery Support.

Windows Server 2012 Failover Clusters
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 brought enterprise-class fault tolerance and system recovery to Microsoft's clustering platform. Windows Server 2012 R2 builds on this technology and provides significant enhancements that offer increased scalability, non-stop storage availability for server applications, simpler management, quicker automatic failover, and more flexibility for designing clusters. To find out more, see Windows Server 2012 Clustering Migration and Support.

NetApp MetroCluster Disaster Recovery Platform
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery software suite that combines failover storage clustering with continual replication to provide rapid, zero data loss disaster recovery between datacenters located up to 185 miles apart from each other. Progent offers online or on-premises access to a certified NetApp MetroCluster consultant who can assist you to design, deploy, manage, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution based on NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to select a topology for your MetroCluster deployment that aligns with your functional requirements and budget. Progent can ensure you adhere to leading practices for configuring your MetroCluster environment by delivering help with procedures like assigning disk pools, arranging aggregate layout, setting up volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, installing switches, designing a tiebreaker, setting up a TCP/IP configuration replication network, and verifying your MetroCluster DR system to show adherence with industry standards and regulatory mandates.

Network Load Balancing
Progent provides fault tolerant load balancing support covering system load balancing, load balanced programs, network backbone routing, and content delivery technology such as Cisco Content Engine. Fault tolerant load balancing solutions for which Progent can provide consulting expertise include Windows 2003 and 2008 Server Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Metaframe and Access Gateway, Cisco CSS, Cisco Distributed Director and ACNS, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. For more information, visit Fault Tolerant Load Balancing.

Zero Downtime Colocation
Progent's Data Center engineers can help you find fault-tolerant data centers that match the specific requirements of your company. Fault tolerant off-site data centers are particularly attractive to small and mid-size companies because of their affordability and convenience compared to taking a do-it-yourself approach. Trying to design an in-house data center with even a basic degree of fault tolerance is financially prohibitive for typical small organizations. Progent is ready to show you how to get all the benefits of non-stop Internet data centers by providing a full array of consulting and maintenance services. For more information, go to High-Availability Internet Data Centers Consulting.

Failsafe Branch Office Connectivity
Progent’s branch office network infrastructure consultants can help companies achieve fault tolerant multi-site connections through redundant system architectures with transparent failover. Progent’s Cisco-certified CCIE engineers can plan and deploy ultra-reliable Inter-office connections supported by fault tolerant EIGRP routers or fault tolerant OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can show you how multi-path connections and transparent fail-over offers economical non-stop interoffice connectivity. To learn more, go to Failsafe Interoffice Connectivity.

High Availability Internet Connections
Progent's Cisco-authorized IT experts can show you how to build an affordable, high availability Internet configuration architecture that can achieve non-stop Internet connectivity via a broad array of fault tolerant Internet access technologies including non-stop BGP, automatic fail-over, and redundant Internet Service Providers. Progent can provide CCIE engineers to help you apply the latest techniques for 24x7 Internet connections to build an economical, fully redundant Internet interface with automatic failover and other features to deliver fault tolerant Internet connections. For more information, visit Non-stop Internet Access Architecture.

Backup and Restore Technology Consulting Services
Progent can provide economical online access to IT engineers with expertise in a wide range of utilities and services that deliver solutions for backing up Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux servers and desktops plus notebooks and smartphones. Progent can provide expertise for leading backup platforms such as Acronis, Symantec Backup Exec, BackupAssist Software, CrashPlan, Double-Take Software, MozyPro, Retrospect, Time Machine, VMware Data Recovery, and Solaris FLARs. Progent can help you to design, enhance, or troubleshoot data backup solutions for a variety of architectures such as local, edge to datacenter, cloud, or a mix. To learn more, go to Backup and Recovery Technology Expertise.

System Center Data Protection Manager Data Recovery Consulting Experts
Progent's expert System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) engineers can help you to create a practical disaster recovery plan, implement an affordable high-availability IT infrastructure, configure a Microsoft SCDPM-powered backup and restore system, thoroughly validate your DPM system, train your IT staff or regular service providers how to maintain Microsoft SCDPM, or provide extensive IT outsourcing such as off-site hosting of SCDPM machines in Progent's data center. For more information, see Microsoft SCDPM Expertise.

Barracuda Backup Cloud and Offsite Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription backup and disaster recovery platform for small and medium-size organizations. A Barracuda Backup solution can include a purpose-built physical appliance built by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with similar features but which utilizes your own storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup safeguards critical business data produced on-premises, 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 Barracuda appliance. Progent is a certified Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts can provide a broad array of consulting support services to assist you to design, integrate, manage and repair a BDR system based on Barracuda Backup. For details, go to Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting.

Altaro VM Backup Solutions for Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software offers small businesses a dependable and affordable solution for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-powered virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup can be used for on-premises, offsite, distributed, and cloud-hosted environments and also enables low-cost cloud backup to Azure Block Blob storage. Top features include industry-leading inline deduplication to reduce backup storage needs, Continuous Data Protection with backup spacing as low as five minutes for reducing your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), advanced encryption, item-level recovery capability for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware vCenter for managing large-scale environments, and the ability to leverage Microsoft VSS technology to back up live virtual machines without downtime. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and can provide a wide range of services to help you to design, deploy, optimize and troubleshoot a backup/restore solution based on Altaro VM Backup. To learn more, see Altaro VM Backup Consulting Services.

Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup
Double-Take offers a selection of tools designed to deliver small businesses a range of affordable alternatives for backing up and recovering business-critical applications including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Blackberry, and Microsoft Office SharePoint. Progent’s disaster recovery planning consultants have in-depth experience incorporating Double-Take Software products into small business IT systems to create a high state of availability and disaster recovery readiness at an affordable cost. To find out more, visit Consulting Services Double-Take Solutions for Backup.

CRISC-Premier Network Risk Mitigation
The Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) program was established by ISACA in 2010 to verify an IT professional's skills to plan, implement, and maintain information system control mechanisms to reduce risk. Progent can provide the services of a CRISC-certified consultant to help you to create and carry out a workplace continuity or disaster recovery plan that follows leading practices promoted by CRISC and geared to match your company's risk appetite, business objectives, and IT budget. For more information, see CRISC-Certified IT 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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