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 2022 integration professionals, Windows Server 2019 integration experts, and Windows Server 2016 consultants can help you set up SRM on Windows Server at the protected site and the recovery site and can also help you configure mission-critical applications by providing services such as Exchange Server 2019 planning and configuration consulting, Exchange Server 2016 migration, SQL Server 2019 migration consulting, SQL Server 2017 upgrade expertise, and SQL Server 2016 integration consulting. Progent's Cisco CCIE consultants can help you design and deploy a robust network infrastructure for Site Recovery Manager, and Progent can provide a NetApp-certified SAN storage expert to help you integrate a NetApp clustered storage solution with SRM.
Key Features of VMware Site Recovery Manager
VMware Site Recovery Manager servers and VMware vCenter servers, running at the protected and recovery sites in conjunction with VMware vSphere and hosted by Microsoft Windows Server, work together to ensure that recovery virtual machines (VMs) are immediately and transparently started up when protected VMs are shut down. The virtual machines at the recovery site use the data replicated from the protected site and are therefore able to continue providing the same services.
SRM's migration of data and services between the protected and recovery sites is controlled by a recovery plan, an automated runbook that defines the order in which VMs are shut down and started up, their allocated resource pools, and the networks the VMs can access. You can configure multiple recovery plans to orchestrate recovery scenarios for specific applications or to handle entire sites. You can centrally manage VMware SRM recovery plans via the vSphere Web Client.
In addition to providing a strong disaster recovery solution to protect against unplanned downtime, VMware SRM also allows non-disruptive execution of planned processes such as disaster avoidance in anticipation of a major storm, moving a datacenter to a new location, testing upgrades and patches, testing a recovery plan to demonstrate compliance, and failback/re-protect after a partial or complete site shutdown. If your protected and recovery sites have a high-bandwidth, low-latency connection within a metro area, you can use array-based storage and synchronous replication with zero data loss (RPO) and rapid recovery time (RTO).
Site Recovery Manager can be configured in a variety of topologies to support different failover scenarios. In an Active-Passive configuration, a production site runs applications and services and a fully-provisioned secondary site waits unused until it is needed for recovery. This traditional topology is quickly falling out of favor because of its low utilization of IT resources. In an Active-Active topology, less urgent workloads such as testing or development are run at the secondary site until the recovery plan calls for them to be shut down to make room for critical workloads following outage. This allows the recovery site to stay productive. In a Bi-directional deployment, production workloads can be run at two sites which Site Recovery Manager will use as mutual protection and recovery sites. If either sites fails, SRM will activate its workloads on the surviving site.
VMware Site Recovery Manager also supports stretched storage clusters that span protected and recovery sites. Stretched clusters allow you to migrate workloads between two geographically proximate sites to balance services without downtime. This combination of technologies delivers the disaster recovery orchestration, automation, and audit reporting capability of SRM plus the ability of stretched clusters to enable fully active datacenters with on-demand, non-disruptive workload balancing.
Additional topologies supported by VMware Site Recovery Manager include shared recovery, where multiple remote sites such as branch offices are protected by the same recovery site, and shared protection, where a single site fails over some applications and VMs to one recovery site and others to one or more other recovery sites. All of the various architectural alternatives for deploying a disaster recovery solution based on VMware SRM have inherent advantages and problems and range in complexity from simple to very challenging. Progent can provide the support of an VMware VCDX-certified expert who can clarify the issues, recommend a topology that fits your organization's technical requirements and IT budget, and provide as-needed guidance and support to help you implement and manage your disaster recovery solution.
Combining Site Recovery Manager and VMware NSX
Because the IP address of a running virtual machine cannot be altered without incurring some downtime, protected sites and recovery sites supported by VMware Site Recovery Manager must have L2 network connectivity to achieve the fastest possible failover time. One way to accomplish this is through VMware's NSX network virtualization platform. The network virtualization provided with VMware NSX makes it possible to preserve L2 and recover the entire logical network topology at the recovery site. NSX also supports APIs for automating recovery at the network layer to optimize RPO and RTO. By combining NSX with a disaster recovery solution based on VMware Site Recovery Manager, you can streamline the recovery of critical networking services at the secondary site including logical switches, distributed logical routers, and distributed firewall (DFW) policies.
For seamless spanning of network and security policies across multiple sites you can use an external replication/synchronization technology like vRO (vRealize Orchestrator, formerly called vCenter Orchestrator), or you can use the Cross-VC feature of VMware NSX. Cross vCenter NSX simplifies the process of deploying Universal Logical Switches, Universal Distributed Logical Router, and Universal Distributed Firewall to create a single unified logical network (L2, L3, DFW) across the protected and recovery site. This permits rapid failover and recovery without requiring you to re-create the network on the recovery site or manually map and remap IP addresses.
Progent can provide the services of a VMware-certified NSX expert to help you integrate VMware Site Recovery Manager with VMware NSX and to configure a disaster recovery solution automated by vRO or Cross vCenter NSX.
How Progent Can Help You with VMware Site Recovery Manager
Progent can provide online or onsite access to a VMware VCDX-certified subject matter expert with world-class knowledge and experience deploying and configuring VMware Site Recovery Manager and VMware's NSX network virtualization platform for disaster recovery and business continuity. Progent offers expert understanding of VMware vCloud Director (vCD), VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) and vCloud Suite used for managing private and hybrid cloud environments that feature high availability, fault tolerance, and application continuity. Progent has expertise with VMware vSAN native-vSphere storage, EMC VNX and VMAX storage systems, Dell EqualLogic storage arrays, NetApp's SAN storage product family, plus storage solutions from Pure Storage and Tintri. Progent also offers advanced consulting for underlying storage technologies including RAID, JBOD, ZFS, VMFS, Fibre Channel (FC), NFS, and iSCSI plus key network technologies including TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, LACP, OSPF, and BGP.
Progent's VCDX-certified VMware Site Recovery Manager and NSX subject matter expert has worked with datacenter architects, network engineers and department directors of some of the world's largest technology companies, major financial institutions, and government agencies to design solutions to improve disaster recovery RPO and RTO. Experience with large-scale projects includes working in environments scaling above 1500 ESXi hosts and 45,000 virtual machines.
Zero-Downtime Solutions Provided by Progent's Experts
Progent's certified engineers can assist your company to implement a sensible, fault-tolerant IT architecture that addresses critical problems covering a wide range of infrastructure solutions and processes such as:
Business Continuity Planning
Progent's business continuity engineers can show you how to create a disaster recovery plan in order to restore network operations in the event of an IT system catastrophe. Progent can help you to create a complete disaster recovery strategy that includes 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 availability issues covering a broad array of infrastructure technologies and procedures. To read more, visit Business Continuity Expertise.
CRISC-Certified Network Risk Mitigation
The CRISC certification program was initiated by ISACA in 2010 to validate an IT professional's ability to design, implement, and support IS control mechanisms to reduce risk. Progent can provide the services of a CRISC-certified consultant to help your company to develop and execute a business continuity or disaster recovery strategy that follows industry best practices promoted by CRISC and crafted to match your organization's risk tolerance, business goals, and budgetary guidelines. For details, visit CRISC-Certified IT risk management specialists.
Microsoft Server 2019 High Availability Failover Clustering
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 introduced significant improvements in scale, performance, manageability, security and compliance, app compatibility, Linux co-existence, container networking, and hybrid integration of local and cloud-hosted resources. Top enhancements of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 are Windows Admin Center for unifying the management of hybrid local/cloud resources, System Insights for utilizing advance predictive intelligence to manage on-premises environments, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Exploit Guard for host-intrusion defense, container networking with Kubernetes, Cluster Sets technology for deploying and managing large high-availability scale-out clusters, and Microsoft's Storage Migration Service for streamlining the upgrade process from legacy releases of Windows Server. For more information, see Microsoft Server 2019 Fault-tolerant Failover Clustering Help.
Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Progent's Windows Server 2016 disaster recovery/business continuity experts can assist you to design a disaster recovery solution built around Microsoft's cloud-tested Failover Clustering tools 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 network-attached storage using low-cost equipment, Virtual Machine Load Balancing for improving the speed and fault-tolerance of Failover Clusters while reducing TCO and management overhead, and Cloud Witness for fast, economical deployment of a failover cluster quorum arbitration point. For more information, see Microsoft Server 2016 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Support.
NetApp MetroCluster High Availability and Disaster Recovery Platform
NetApp MetroCluster is a high-availability and disaster recovery platform that combines array-based storage clustering along with continual replication to deliver rapid, zero RPO disaster recovery between datacenters located as far as 300km apart from each other. Progent offers online or on-premises access to a NetApp MetroCluster expert who can assist you to design, configure, administer, upgrade, test and repair a disaster recovery system built around NetApp MetroCluster. Progent can assist you to select an architecture for your MetroCluster environment that aligns with your technical needs and IT budget. Progent can make sure you follow best practices for configuring your MetroCluster solution by providing help with tasks like assigning disk pools and shelf IDs, arranging plexes layout, provisioning NetApp FlexVol volumes, setting up Data ONTAP configuration replication service, installing Cisco and Brocade switches, implementing a tiebreaker mechanism, setting up a configuration replication network, and testing your MetroCluster DR system to prove compliance with information assurance standards and government mandates.
Network Load Balancing
Progent offers high availability load balancing consulting covering system load balancing, load balanced programs, LAN/WAN backbone routing, and content dispatching technology such as F5 Networks 3DNS. Fault tolerant load balancing solutions for which Progent offers consulting expertise include Windows Server 2003 and 2008 Network Load Balancing Manager, Citrix Access Suite and Access Gateway, Cisco Content Services Switch, Cisco Content Engine and Cisco CDN Software, and F5 Networks 3-DNS. For details, see Non-stop Load Balancing.
Fault Tolerant Internet Data Centers
Progent's Data Center engineers can help you select high availability data centers that meet the particular requirements of your company. Fault tolerant off-site data centers are especially attractive to small and mid-size companies due to of their affordability and simplified logistics in comparison to taking a do-it-yourself strategy. Trying to create an on-site data center that offers even a minimum level of fault tolerance is too expensive for most small businesses. Progent is ready to help you reap all the benefits of 24x7 data centers by providing a complete range of consulting and support services. To read more, see Fault Tolerant Colocation Consulting.
24x7 Inter-office Networking
Progent's inter-site connection engineers can help businesses achieve zero-downtime branch office connectivity solutions by means of fully redundant system architectures with automatic failover. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE engineers can plan and deploy ultra-reliable Inter-office networks based on zero-downtime EIGRP routers or non-stop OSPF configurations of Cisco routers. Progent can demonstrate how multi-path connectivity and automatic fail-over can provide economical 24x7 interoffice connectivity. To read more, see Failsafe Interoffice Connectivity.
Fault Tolerant Internet Connectivity
Progent's Cisco-certified IT consultants can help you design an economical, high availability Internet connection solution that can achieve non-stop Internet connectivity via a broad range of high availability Internet network technologies including fault tolerant BGP, automatic fail-over, and redundant Internet Service Providers. Progent offers Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert consultants to help you utilize the most up-to-date techniques for fault tolerant Internet connections to build an economical, fully redundant Internet network with automatic failover and other capabilities to deliver fault tolerant Internet availability. To learn more, go to Fault Tolerant Internet Connectivity Architecture.
Backup and Recovery Solutions Consulting
Progent offers economical online support from IT engineers with expertise in a broad array of utilities and technologies that deliver solutions for protecting Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux physical and virtual servers and desktops plus laptops and handhelds. Progent can provide help for all major data protection products including Acronis Backup and Recovery, Symantec Backup Exec, BackupAssist, HP Data Protector, Double-Take Backup, MozyPro, Retrospect, Apple Time Machine, vSphere Data Protection, and Solaris FLARs. Progent can help you to design, enhance, or troubleshoot data backup systems for a range of architectures such as on-premises, remote, cloud-based, or a mix. To read more, see Backup and Restore Technology Consulting.
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Backup and Restore Consulting Services
Progent's certified System Center Data Protection Manager engineers can help you to develop an effective business continuity strategy, design a cost-effective fault-tolerante IT architecture, configure a SCDPM-based recovery solution, thoroughly validate your DPM system, educate your administrative personnel or regular service providers how to maintain System Center Data Protection Manager, or provide extensive information technology support outsourcing including off-site housing of System Center Data Protection Manager servers in Progent's secure data center. For details, go to Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager Expertise.
Barracuda Backup On-premises and Cloud Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Barracuda Backup is a low-cost, subscription-based backup/restore platform for small and medium-size organizations. A Barracuda Backup solution can incorporate a purpose-built physical storage device manufactured by Barracuda or a software-based appliance with comparable features but which utilizes your existing storage infrastructure. Barracuda Backup protects vital business data produced locally, at one or multiple remote sites, or in the cloud. For disaster preparedness, you can replicate data to the Barracuda Cloud, to Amazon AWS, or to any site with a Barracuda appliance. Progent is a Barracuda partner and Progent's Barracuda Backup consulting experts offer a wide range of consulting support services to assist you to design, integrate, operate and debug a BDR solution built on Barracuda Backup. For additional information, see Barracuda Backup and disaster recovery consulting and management.
ProSight Altaro VM Backup Solutions for Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
Altaro VM Backup provides small 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 on-premises, offsite, multi-site, and cloud-hosted environments and also supports cost-effective backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Altaro VM Backup supports high-end features like Immutable Cloud Storage for enhanced protection from ransomware. Progent is a certified Altaro partner and offers a wide array of remote or on-premises consulting services to assist you to design, install, optimize and troubleshoot a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery system based on Altaro VM Backup software. With ProSight DPS Altaro VM Backup, Progent offers a managed backup/recovery service based on Altaro VM Backup. To find out more, go to Altaro VM Backup certified consultants.
ProSight Data Protection Services 365 Total Backup Services for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 provides simple archiving but does not include native support for key data protection capabilities such as Exchange Online backups or long-term point-in-time data recovery for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup delivers a full-featured platform for automatic backup and rapid restoration of all your organization's M365 mailboxes, Microsoft Teams Chats, SharePoint documents, OneDrive for Business files, and content on Windows desktops and laptops. Progent is an authorized Hornetsecurity/Altaro partner and has designed ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) 365 Total Backup to provide comprehensive management services for Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup suite. ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup provides an affordable backup-as-a-service solution that defends M365 apps against data loss or corruption caused by user or system mistakes, malicious sabotage, and cyber assaults such as ransomware. For details, visit ProSight DPS 365 Total Backup solutions for Microsoft 365.
Fully Managed Cloud Backup: ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO
ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO provide small and mid-sized businesses a low cost and fully managed service for secure backup/disaster recovery (BDR). Available at a fixed monthly rate, ProSight DPS ECHO automates your backup activities and allow rapid restoration of vital data, apps and VMs that have become unavailable or damaged due to hardware breakdowns, software glitches, natural disasters, human mistakes, or malicious attacks such as ransomware. ProSight Data Protection Services ECHO can help you back up, retrieve and restore files, folders, applications, system images, as well as Hyper-V and VMware virtual machine images. Critical data can be backed up on the cloud, to an on-premises device, or mirrored to both. Progent's BDR consultants can provide world-class expertise to set up ProSight DPS ECHO to be compliant with government and industry regulatory standards such as HIPAA, FINRA, and PCI and, whenever needed, can help you to restore your business-critical data. Read more about ProSight DPS ECHO managed backup and recovery.
ProSight MSP360 Backup Services
Progent's data protection experts can help your company to design, deploy and troubleshoot a backup/restore plan based on MSP360 software. MSP360 offers file/folder or image backup/restore for virtual machines and physical computers, supports all popular public clouds, and allows you to build a backup ecosystem with a low Recovery Time Objective and a granular Recovery Point Objective. With ProSight MSP360 Backup, Progent can provide end-to-end monitoring and remote management of your backup system to protect against data loss caused by user miscues, system glitches, ill-intentioned users, and external assaults like ransomware. To read more, see ProSight MSP360 Backup solutions.
Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Backup and Recovery
Double-Take publishes a selection of tools intended to provide small and midsize businesses a range of affordable alternatives for replicating and restoring vital applications including Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, RIM Blackberry, and Microsoft SharePoint. Progent's business continuity planning consultants have extensive experience integrating Double-Take technology into small business IT systems to achieve an advanced level of fault tolerance and disaster recovery capability at an affordable cost. To find out more, go to Consulting Services Double-Take Software for Data Backup.
Why Choose Progent for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning Solutions?
Because Progent is a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner and provides high-level application expertise for a wide range of small business software programs, Progent is able to assist customers to find comprehensive information technology solutions that maximize the business value of your network. As a Registered Partner for Cisco, Progent can provide the services of premier engineers and specialists with expertise in architecting, configuring and supporting networking environments based on Cisco technology. The broad scope of Progent's IT know-how and Progent's familiarity with the requirements of small businesses make Progent the perfect resource for building and running a cost-effective, dependable network.
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::
Emergency Consulting Support for Network Service Firms Remote Technical Support
Consulting for IT Service Firms Integration
Progent's Reseller Program for IT Service Organizations lets you use Progent's information technology experts while retaining your own brand as a seamless extension of your network services staff.
Consultants Citrix XenServer
Consultants Citrix Virtual Server
Progent's Citrix-authorized consultants can help you to understand the strategic benefits of XenServer as well as additional Citrix products, and can help your IT organization to design, validate, execute, troubleshoot, and maintain a XenServer solution. Progent can in addition analyze your current Citrix technology environment and help you to optimize resource utilization, responsiveness, security and compliance, uptime, and disaster recovery.
MSP360 Backup Professional
Emergency MSP360 Cloud Backup/Restore Online Support
Progent's data protection experts can help you to design, install and manage a backupup/restore plan based on MSP360 Backup technology to protect your IT resources residing on any leading public cloud. Progent offers end-to-end monitoring and remote management to prevent data loss resulting from human mistakes, software errors, ill-intentioned insiders, and external attacks like ransomware.
System Center Operations Manager Support and Integration
Remote Technical Support MOM 2007
Small to mid-sized businesses can now enjoy all the benefits of Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 and also have quick access to Progent's Microsoft and Cisco certified network consulting experts. With Progent's economically priced network service packages, mid-size organizations can select a simple co-sourcing package based on Operations Manager 2007 with server monitoring, reporting, Help Desk and online troubleshooting or a comprehensive 24x7 outsourcing package. Progent supports Operations Manager 2007 to provide small company networks enterprise-class reliability, security and performance.
Help and Support Threat Management Gateway
Forefront TMG 2010 Support and Help
Forefront Threat Management Gateway is based on the powerful security capabilities of Internet Security and Acceleration Server and offers a centrally managed web gateway that delivers a one-server platform for an array of security features including an application layer and network layer firewall, URL monitoring and filtering, malware inspection, intrusion protection, application proxy, Virtual Private Network control, plus HTTP/HTTPS inspection. Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway provides comprehensive web security logging and reporting features, permits customized reports powered by SQL Server, works with Active Directory to streamline policy enforcement, and can be deployed as a virtual machine to cut expenses and improve recoverability. Progent's Microsoft-certified engineers can help your company to design and execute pilot and production implementations; integrate Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway with Windows 2008 R2, AD, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and SharePoint 2010; set up Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway to run on a virtual machine with Windows Hyper-V; and provide continuing support and troubleshooting. Progent can also help you to migrate smoothly to Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 from Microsoft ISA Server 2006 or 2004.
After Hours Support Outsourcing Cisco IP phones
IP Communications Configuration
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified network infrastructure experts offer high-level support for Cisco Unified Communications Manager (formerly CallManager). Progent can help your organization to integrate VoIP phones, design dial plans, set up SIP trunking and PSTN support, deploy Cisco ISR G2 routers with CUBE support, and design UCS server failover solutions.
Cisco ASA Firepower Online Help
ASA 5500-X Firewall with Firepower Engineer
Cisco's Firepower Next Generation Firewalls deliver a major performance boost compared to Cisco's previous-generation ASA 5500-X security appliances and include centralized control of modern security features such as application visibility, next-generation intrusion protection with risk prioritization, advanced malware protection, URL filtering, and sandboxing. Progent's Cisco CCIE firewall consultants can assist your organization to design and execute an efficient upgrade to Cisco Firepower Series firewalls from Cisco's legacy ASA 5500-X, ASA 5500, or PIX appliances and help you enhance Firepower appliances with Cisco's cloud-based services to build and centrally control IT ecosystems that span branch offices, data centers, private clouds and public clouds.
DopplePaymer ransomware recovery Consult
Urgent Ryuk ransomware protection Professionals
Progent's ransomware consultants can help you to evaluate your ransomware defenses, monitor and protect your IT environment, help with negotiating a settlement with a hacker, and restore an information system victimized by a ransomware variant such as Ryuk, Maze, Sodinokibi, DopplePaymer, Conti or Nephilim.
System Center 2016 Cloud Integration IT Services
System Center 2016 Operations Manager On-site Technical Support
Small to mid-sized companies can now get all the advantages of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and in addition have fast access to Progent's Microsoft Premier network consulting professionals. With Progent's economically priced IT service packages, small organizations can choose a simple Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007-based co-sourcing package with network monitoring, reporting, Help Desk and online service or a comprehensive 24x7 outsourcing package. Progent supports Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to provide small business information systems world-class reliability, protection, and productivity.
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