Enterprise Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Consulting
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
Planning, Deployment, Management and Troubleshooting
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 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.
Additional High Availability Technologies Offered by Progent's Consultants
Progent's certified support professionals can help your business to implement an affordable, non-stop information network that addresses major issues encompassing a broad range of networking technologies and operations including:
Business Continuity Planning
Progent's business continuity professionals can help you create a business continuity strategy that will allow you to resume IT functionality in case of an information system catastrophe. Progent can assist you to define a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy that incorporates scheduled disaster recovery assessments and drills. Progent's Microsoft and Cisco-certified professionals can also help you create an affordable, fault-tolerant system solution that takes into account availability issues covering a wide range of infrastructure technologies and processes. For more information, go to Disaster Recovery Consulting Services.
Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services
ProSight Data Protection Services offer small and mid-sized businesses an affordable end-to-end service for secure backup/disaster recovery. Available at a fixed monthly cost, ProSight DPS automates your backup processes and enables rapid restoration of critical files, apps and virtual machines that have become unavailable or damaged due to hardware failures, software bugs, natural disasters, human mistakes, or malware attacks like ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services can help you back up, recover and restore files, folders, apps, system images, plus Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware images/. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to a local device, or mirrored to both. Progent's BDR specialists can deliver advanced expertise to configure ProSight DPS to to comply with regulatory standards like HIPAA, FIRPA, and PCI and, whenever needed, can help you to recover your business-critical information. Read more about ProSight Data Protection Services Managed Cloud Backup and Recovery.
Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery consultants can assist you to design a disaster recovery solution built around Microsoft's cloud-tested Failover Clustering technologies including Cluster OS Rolling Upgrade for non-intrusive migration to Windows Server 2016, Storage Replica for zero-data-loss recovery, Storage Spaces Direct for high-performance storage clusters using industry-standard equipment, Virtual Machine Load Balancing for enhancing the speed and resilience of Failover Clusters while reducing capital investment and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for fast, affordable deployment of a failover cluster quorum arbitration point. To read more, go to Windows Server 2016 Disaster Recovery Help.
Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering
Windows Server 2008 R2 brought enterprise-class fault tolerance and system recovery to Microsoft's clustering solution. Windows Server 2012 R2 adds to this technology and provides significant enhancements that offer more scalability, better disk storage uptime for server applications, simpler management, faster failover, and additional flexibility for architecting clusters. To find out more, see Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering Migration and Support.
NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Platform
NetApp MetroCluster is a disaster recovery platform that combines failover storage clustering with replication to provide rapid, zero RPO disaster recovery between sites located up to 185 miles (300km) apart from each other. Progent can provide the skills of a certified NetApp MetroCluster expert who can assist you to plan, deploy, manage, upgrade, test and troubleshoot a disaster recovery solution built around NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can help you to choose a topology for your MetroCluster deployment that meets your technical needs and budget. Progent can ensure you adhere to best practices for configuring your MetroCluster solution by delivering guidance with procedures such as assigning disk pools, arranging aggregate and plexes layout, provisioning volumes, setting up NetApp Snapshot, provisioning Cisco and Brocade switches, implementing a tiebreaker mechanism, designing a configuration replication network, and verifying your DR system to verify compliance with information assurance standards and government requirements.
Fault Tolerant Load Balancing
Progent provides high availability load balancing consulting covering system load balancing, load balanced applications, LAN/WAN infrastructure routing, and content dispatching technology such as F5 Networks 3DNS. High availability load balancing technologies for which Progent offers consulting services include Windows 2003 and 2008 Server Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Presentation Server, Cisco CSS, Cisco Content Distribution Manager and LocalDirector 400 series, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. To read more, visit Fault Tolerant Load Balancing.
Zero Downtime Internet Data Centers
Progent's Data Center consultants can show you how to identify fault-tolerant data centers that match the particular needs of your company. Fault tolerant co-location sites are particularly appealing to small and mid-size companies because of their affordability and convenience compared to taking a do-it-yourself approach. Attempting to build an on-site data center with even a basic degree of fault tolerance is too expensive for typical small organizations. Progent can show you how to get all the benefits of 24x7 colo sites by providing a full range of consulting and support services. To find out more, go to Non-stop Data Centers Expertise.
High-Availability Interoffice Networking
Progent’s inter-site connection engineers can help organizations create zero-downtime multi-site connections by means of fully redundant system architectures featuring transparent failover. Progent’s Cisco-premier CCIE network engineers can design and deploy high-availability Inter-office connections supported by zero-downtime EIGRP network routers or non-stop OSPF deployment of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connectivity and transparent fail-over offers economical 24x7 interoffice networking. To find out more, visit 24x7 Inter-office Networking.
24x7 Internet Connectivity
Progent's Cisco-certified network experts can help you design an economical, fault tolerant Internet configuration architecture that can deliver non-stop Internet access via a wide range of high availability Internet access technologies including non-stop BGP, automatic fail-over, and multiple Internet Service Providers. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert consultants to help you apply the most up-to-date technology for fault tolerant Internet access to create an affordable, completely redundant Internet interface with automatic failover and other capabilities to create zero-downtime Internet connections. For more information, see Fault Tolerant Internet Connectivity Solutions.
Backup and Restore Technology Consultants
Progent offers economical online access to engineers skilled in a broad range of utilities and technologies that provide solutions for backing up Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux physical and virtual servers and desktops as well as notebooks and smartphones. Progent offers help for leading backup platforms such as Acronis, Symantec Backup Exec, BackupAssist, HP Data Protector, Double-Take Software, Mozy, Retrospect for Macintosh, Time Machine, vSphere Data Protection, and Solaris FLARs. Progent can assist you to deploy, upgrade, or maintain backup/restore solutions for a range of architectures such as on-premises, remote, cloud, or hybrid. For details, visit Backup and Restore Technology Consulting Services.
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Backup and Recovery Consulting Services
Progent's expert Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager engineers can assist your company to develop an effective workplace recovery plan, implement an affordable fault-tolerante IT architecture, install a System Center Data Protection Manager-powered backup and recovery solution, thoroughly validate your system, train your IT personnel or local consultants how to manage SCDPM, or provide extensive IT outsourcing including remote hosting of Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager machines in Progent's secure data center facility. For details, go to System Center Data Protection Manager Expertise.
Barracuda Backup On-premises and Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is an affordable, subscription-based backup and disaster recovery service for small and mid-size organizations. A Barracuda Backup solution 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 generated locally, at one or multiple remote locations, or in the cloud. For disaster protection, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon Web Services (AWS), or to any site with a Barracuda appliance. Progent is a Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts can provide a broad range of consulting services to help you to plan, configure, manage and troubleshoot a BDR solution built on Barracuda technology. For details, see Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting and management.
Altaro VM Backup Software for Backup and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup software provides small businesses a reliable and affordable platform for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be used for on-premises, offsite, multi-site, and cloud architectures and also supports cost-effective backup to Azure Block Blob storage. Top features include state-of-the-art inline deduplication to reduce backup storage needs, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing as low as five minutes for minimizing your Recovery Point Objective, military-grade encryption, item-level restore options for individual files and emails, support for Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and for VMware vCenter for handling large-scale environments, and support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to back up live VMs with zero downtime. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and can provide a broad range of consulting services to assist you to plan, install, optimize and troubleshoot a backup and disaster recovery system based on Altaro VM Backup. For details, see Altaro VM Backup Consulting.
Consulting for Double-Take Solutions for Data Backup and Recovery
Double-Take Software offers a family of products designed to deliver small and midsize companies a range of affordable solutions for replicating and recovering business-critical workloads such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL, Blackberry, and SharePoint. Progent’s business continuity planning experts have in-depth backgrounds incorporating Double-Take Software technology into small company IT networks to create an advanced level of fault tolerance and disaster recovery readiness at an affordable price. To learn more, see Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup.
CRISC-Certified IT Risk Control
The CRISC program was established by ISACA to verify an IT professional's ability to design, deploy, and maintain IS control mechanisms to mitigate risk. Progent offers the services of a CRISC-certified engineer to assist you to create and execute a workplace continuity strategy that follows leading practices promoted by CRISC and geared to align with your organization's risk appetite, business goals, and IT budget. For more information, see CRISC-Premier IT risk management 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
An index of content::
Open Now CCIE Expert Certified Aironet 2600 Access Point Online Consulting
Consultants Aironet 2700 Access Point
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified Wi-Fi network infrastructure consultants offer online or onsite integration and debugging support to help your organization to plan, configure, update, optimize, administer and debug Aironet wireless access point environments of any scale or topology. Progent's Cisco wireless controller experts can also help you to integrate your Wi-Fi ecosystem with your wired network infrastructure and cloud-hosted resources to build a seamless enterprise connectivity solution that is simple to administer and scale. Progent also offers affordable wireless site surveys to assist you to decide the most efficient selection, location and setup of Aironet wireless access points to accommodate your specific office design, building structure, and expected network traffic.
Microsoft Certified Exchange Server Upgrade Engineer
Exchange Migration Professional
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can deliver affordable remote and on-premises help to implement your migration to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, produce extensive documentation of your new messaging environment, train your network support team and end users to get them up to speed quickly on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, and provide continuing administrative consulting and engineering help. Progent can also assist you to upgrade from Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Server 2016.
Wireless Network Consultants
Microsoft Activesync Remote Consulting
Progent’s consultants provide experience in a variety of technologies relevant to mobile networking including network topology, Activesync, wireless protection, wireless email, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Research in Motion Blackberry, and wireless software programming. Progent's certified professionals can save your business time and money by using their wireless experience to help you choose and integrate mobile networking solutions that make sense for your company. Progent can also optimize your IT infrastructure so that wireless appliances work more reliably.
SharePoint Server 2013 Professionals
Online Consulting SharePoint Server 2013
Progent has been delivering SharePoint support since the initial product was released more than a a dozen years, and Progent has the breadth and depth of technical knowledge to assist organizations of all sizes to design and carry out a SharePoint Server 2013 deployment and create SharePoint Server 2013 applications that add substantial business value to your information network. Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting team can assist you to evaluate the business advantages of upgrading to SharePoint Server or SharePoint Online from older releases of SharePoint or from a different collaboration solution; decide if an on-premises, Cloud-based or hybrid configuration is most sensible for your company; and select the right edition of SharePoint 2013 for your applications. Progent can provide full project management outsourcing or can assist in individual tasks associated with your SharePoint 2013 deployment.
24-Hour Small Government Specialists
Microsoft Experts County Government Exchange Consult
Progent has extensive experience providing a broad range of remote IT support and urgent troubleshooting services to local governments and schools throughout the United States. Progent is one of the industry’s pioneers in providing expert online IT consulting and has provided network solutions to clients in every state. Remote support eliminates travel costs and solves problems more quickly than onsite support.
Private Cloud Integration Consultancy
Virtual Machine Hosting Consultant Services
Progent's ProSight Virtual Hosting outsourcing provides complete hosting of a small or mid-size company's production servers in an environment that delivers the highest level of dependability and scalability and is also easy to migrate to any data center. ProSight Virtual Hosting services are based on mature virtualization architectures that enable small companies with mixed- platform environments to save dramatically on the expense of capital equipment, system support, and IT management while achieving enterprise-class reliability and an unmatched degree of vendor flexibility.
Citrix HDX Computer Consulting
virtual application delivery Consultants
Citrix offers a comprehensive family of platforms that provide enterprise-class manageability, scalability, and responsiveness for server virtualization and for server-based distribution of Windows desktops and applications. For managing virtualized desktops and applications, Citrix offers Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. For creating and managing virtual servers, Citrix has developed Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V. Progent's Citrix-certified consultants can help you to assess the business benefits of Citrix virtualization products and help you plan, test, implement, troubleshoot, and support Citrix virtualization platforms.
Fortinet 90 Series Firewalls Troubleshooting
Fortinet 400 Series Firewalls Outsourcing
Fortinet next-generation firewalls are industry leaders in delivering best-in-class performance for SSL inspection. Progent's Fortinet FortiGate firewall consultants can assist your business to deploy your Fortinet FortiGate firewalls to protect all your IT resources at the enterprise edge, within the data center core, at branch locations, and in the cloud.
Colocation Network Consultants
Colocation Remote Troubleshooting
Progent’s colocation center support services are intended for businesses with equipment located at Internet Data Centers or data center co-location hosting facilities and in need of on-demand on-premises assistance at the co-location facility as well as off-site help from Microsoft and Cisco Certified professionals. Progent offers a full array of IDC and data center and collocation support services including network topology evaluation, Windows and Linux server integration and support, tech support for server and telecommunications networking, design and deployment of fault tolerant configurations, defining and deploying layered security structures, firewall configuration and support, designing load balancing solutions, and creating high-availability server and storage clustering systems.
SonicWall Gateway Security Suite Security Group
SonicWall TZ Firewall Consulting Services
Progent's certified SonicWall firewall experts can help you configure, manage, and update SonicWall firewall appliances including the current SonicWall TZ, NSa and NSsp families of firewalls and the legacy SonicWall PRO 1260 Secure Switch devices. Progent's CISSP and GIAC-certified network security consultants can help you incorporate SonicWall security gateways into an end-to-end security plan and build protection into your corporate operations.
SCCM 2016 Mobile Device Management Engineer
Emergency SCCM 2016 Planning Technology Consulting Services
System Center Configuration Manager 2016 automates application and device deployment at scale, simplifies security and compliance settings management, keeps track of network resources, protects against corporate data leakage, provides health monitoring, enables secure end-user self service, and offers a common control mechanism for managing multi-OS networks based on on-premises, cloud, or hybrid deployment models. Progent's Microsoft-certified Configuration Manager 2016 consulting team and Microsoft Azure cloud integration experts can help your organization with any aspect of planning, installing, operating and repairing a System Center 2016 Configuration Manager deployment for local, cloud-based, or hybrid environments.
Antivirus Small Business Subscription
Small Business Subscription Antivirus
Email Guard by Postini offers constantly updated spam and virus blocking, content filtering, and security from e-mail-borne DHA attacks and denial of service attacks. Progent is a Postini aggregator and support firm. If your organization is too small to qualify for a standard Postini license, you can still have access to Postini’s Perimeter Management services through Progent’s E-Mail Guard anti-spam and anti-virus aggregation program. Progent’s certified e-mail protection professionals can help you create an email security strategy that features anti-spam and virus protection services and policies.
Exchange 2013 eDiscovery IT Services
Remote Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange 2013
Exchange Server 2013 includes significant improvements to the functionality of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and introduces important innovations plus a revamped architecture. These improvements affect key facets of IT including manageability, high availability (HA), compliance, cost of ownership, collaboration, extensibility, throughput, cross-version interoperability, and productivity. Progent's Microsoft-certified Exchange 2013 consultants can assist your organization to understand the potential advantages of upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, design a cost-effective test and deployment strategy, and train your IT team to maintain your Exchange 2013 solution. Progent can also provide ongoing online consulting and management for Exchange 2013.
QTS/Herakles Internet Data Center Consultancy
QTS Colocation Center Engineer
The QTS (formerly Herakles) Internet Data Center facility is located in the seismically-stable Natomas neighborhood of Sacramento, CA. If your company is now utilizing the QTS data center as a colocation facility or if your business is planning on migrating your main or offsite backup system to Herakles/QTS, Progent offers a variety of affordable services that include data center relocation, equipment installation and updates, infrastructure optimization, project management, virtual server configuration, remote network monitoring, automated network management, software programming, disaster recovery/business continuity planning and testing, data security assessment, and the support of Progent's Test Lab.
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