Venyu Blog

 

Right now there is a lot of talk about server virtualization and the benefits that it provides. These discussions often focus on how it can help an organization internally drive down its costs while improving efficiencies. But an equally important way to view server virtualization is to consider how it gives organizations new options for data protection and disaster recovery that require little or no change to their current physical infrastructure while creating a much more elastic IT environment that they can leverage to create new opportunities for data protection and disaster recovery (DR). 

Estimates on the level of adoption of server virtualization among organizations vary though it is generally believed that every enterprise organization is using server virtualization at some level. Among small and midsize businesses (SMBs) server virtualization’s adoption rate lags that rate though it still around 38%. 

However as organizations start down the server virtualization path, they need to view it from a broader context than strictly viewing it as a means to virtualize test, development or application servers. While they will likely see server virtualization’s benefits, they will also encounter the new headaches that virtual environments create. For instance: 

• Virtual servers may create performance bottlenecks on the physical machine, the network or even on the attached storage system(s).
• Virtualized applications on the same physical server will contend for the same hardware resources at the same time possibly resulting in unacceptable performance hits on production applications.
• Legacy backup and recovery techniques often need to change because the newly virtualized environment cannot support multiple backup jobs executing concurrently.

So while organizations should be looking to adopt a strategy that leads to the eventual virtualization of their server hardware environment, they also should be looking for a way to safely segue into this type of environment. To do so, a logical place to start is to first introduce server virtualization as part of their broader corporate data protection and disaster recovery strategy. 

In many organizations, their current data protection solution may already be operating at less than desired or optimal levels. Further, it is also quite possible that they have no disaster recovery (DR) solution or, if they have one, they rarely or never test it. 

This is why a marriage of data protection and disaster recovery (DR) as-a-service with server virtualization as part of an implementation of server virtualization should be considered. It starts organizations down the path of solving their existing data protection and DR problems while simultaneously creating a more elastic IT environment in the following three ways: 

• Data protection and DR solutions require minimal or no disruption to existing physical or virtual server environments. While these data protection and DR solutions (aka online data backup) are not new, what is new is how they are being applied in that they do not require organizations have a “like” physical server in place to recover the application.

Organizations can now recover the application to a virtual machine hosted by a physical server that may reside anywhere – at their site, at a remote site or even at a site hosted by a third party such as Venyu. The point is, organizations now have much more freedom to recover these applications to virtual servers that reside anywhere while changing little or nothing in their current environment. 

• The speed at which they can recover applications running on existing physical servers on a virtual server can be greatly improved. One of the carrots that server virtualization dangles is that organizations, once they virtualize their existing production applications, can take advantage of features like Live Migration to dynamically roll virtualized applications from one physical server to another in the event of a disaster.

However software also exists that enables organizations to do this so they do not need to first virtualize their production servers. Rather, they can swing the application from an existing physical server to a virtual server and back again, even to a virtual server residing on a physical machine with a third party provider. 

• Organizations now have the option to recover their applications that run on their physical servers to virtual servers, they can now test drive these applications in a virtualized environment. Whether or not organizations ever virtualize applications in their production environments, they can use these copies of production data as source data for testing, simulating software upgrades or patches on production servers or even doing test drive of how well the application runs in a virtualized environment on other types of server hardware before they formally virtualize

The benefits of server virtualization are being widely touted but it still has its fair share of gotchas that can catch an organization unawares. So while organizations are wise to want to take advantage of server virtualization, they must also proceed in a cautious manner. By using it in conjunction with data protection and DR as-a-Service, they can solve these immediate challenges while laying the groundwork for not only transitioning to a virtualized environment across the board but one that enables a more elastic IT environment as well.