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Disaster recovery failover and high availability for virtual servers

• Back up vRealize Automation with these best practices in mind

  Improve the integrity of vRealize Automation backups by minimizing active transactions, backing up appliances and databases simultaneously and testing restoration processes. Continue Reading

• Back up IaaS components for vRealize Automation

  During a vRealize Automation backup, you can use snapshots for IaaS components, but you have to create additional notes and copy configuration files to ensure a complete backup. Continue Reading

• Strategies for protecting the vRealize Automation appliance

  To adequately protect the vRealize Automation appliance, you should employ a variety of strategies and tools, including clones, configuration file copies and vSphere Replication. Continue Reading

• Use vRealize Automation backup and restoration capabilities

  There are many components involved when backing up and restoring vRealize Automation. Choose your method based on business goals and the degree of protection desired. Continue Reading

• What are the most common mistakes made when creating a VMware DR plan?

  DR planning mistakes are easy to make. Avoid selecting a tool that doesn't meet your needs or that's overly complex, carefully consider the replication site and test frequently. Continue Reading

• Which third-party products can you use for VMware disaster recovery?

  Native VMware disaster recovery might not make sense for every company. Which third-party products can help fill feature gaps?Continue Reading

• Create a high-availability strategy to prevent system failure

  High availability is an incredibly valuable concept, one that helps safeguard systems and components against failure. Improve your high-availability strategy with these tips.Continue Reading

• Proactive measures help to ensure business continuity

  An organization needs to devise a strategy that keeps its virtual machines available to the extent possible and recoverable when disaster strikes. This strategic planning should include disaster avoidance -- not simply disaster recovery. This ...Continue Reading

• How does a Hyper-V Replica failover work?

  Microsoft offers both planned and unplanned Hyper-V Replica failover options. While the use cases seem clear, admins should know the functional differences.Continue Reading

• Why N+1 is the wrong approach to data center resiliency

  A simple N+1 approach to data center resiliency may not be the best choice for maintaining availability and reducing hardware waste.Continue Reading

• What does N+1 redundancy mean?

  In data centers, N+1 redundancy is used to express the idea that a system should be designed to withstand the loss of a component.Continue Reading

• Plan for hardware failure, because you can't avoid it

  With the popularity of software features that help improve application availability, IT pros often forget that they can't prevent every hardware failure, which causes them to forget to plan the recovery.Continue Reading

• Bandwidth needs may put a stretched cluster out of reach

  A stretched cluster can provide true failover and VM mobility, but its networking and storage requirements make it an expensive approach.Continue Reading

• Quick links to help you solve clustering problems

  Have you ever wondered what the ideal number of virtual clusters is for your environment? Find out the magic number and more with these links.Continue Reading

• Reframing the server uptime debate

  Looking at uptime from a business perspective is the only way to determine how many 'nines' are enough.Continue Reading

• It's time to generate a virtual server battery backup plan

  Knowing how virtualization affects power consumption can help you extend server battery backup life in the event of an outage.Continue Reading

• Mix hardware and software for the best VM high availability

  Administrators must implement a level of resilience and availability that is appropriate for each individual workload.Continue Reading

• Choosing disaster recovery options that fit your virtual needs

  Periodic backups may not be enough to protect your VMs, but there are a variety of disaster recovery options that can meet your needs.Continue Reading

• How Hyper-V Recovery Manager works and where it falls short

  With its functional limitations and current pricing, Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager may not make sense for full-scale enterprise recovery.Continue Reading

• VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

  VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a disaster recovery management product from VMware that provides automated failover and disaster recovery testing.Continue Reading

• Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager

  Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager is a cloud-based service that automates the backup and recovery of Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).Continue Reading

• Virtualization basics: Integrating VMware HA into a failover strategy

  The flexibility to move VMs among hosts is a primary advantage to virtualization, making it the perfect approach for your failover strategy.Continue Reading

• Tap into virtualization's benefits for better disaster recovery

  Virtualization creates an abstraction layer between hardware and the operating system and applications, providing great flexibility and ease when it comes to recovering systems after a disaster. And many virtualization platforms offer the ability to...Continue Reading

• Prepare and prevent: Virtual recovery and backup strategies

  A virtual recovery and backup plan will be beneficial to your business in the long run when a virtual disaster hits.Continue Reading

• Proactively prevent downtime by protecting VMs from a server fault

  You may not be able to avoid a server fault, but you can mitigate its affect by distributing critical workloads across multiple physical servers.Continue Reading

• Capacity planning strategies for successful failover clusters

  Larger failover clusters improve resource utilization, but could also leave you vulnerable if you don't design around your biggest VMs.Continue Reading

• How vSphere Metro Storage Cluster differs from Site Recovery Manager

  Both vSphere Metro Storage Cluster and VMware Site Recovery Manager will help your organization limit downtime, but they work in very different ways.Continue Reading

• When your high availability architecture should include OS protection

  Adding OS-level high availability on top of an existing HA system may seem like overkill, but certain circumstances necessitate extra protection.Continue Reading

• Power management a must for oVirt high availability

  Dodge dreaded downtime by enabling power management in your oVirt 3.1 environment.Continue Reading

• Improving business continuity via a virtual disaster recovery strategy

  Update your business's disaster recovery strategy to take full advantage of virtualization's time- and cost-saving benefits.Continue Reading

• Hyper-V Replica improves fault tolerance without a failover cluster

  Are you looking for a cheaper alternative to a failover cluster? Windows Server 2012 includes a new feature, Hyper-V Replica, that can be an effective substitute.Continue Reading

• Using virtualization in a disaster recovery strategy

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• SMB cookbook: Whipping up a virtualization disaster recovery plan

  If your virtualization disaster recovery plan consists of just a backup tool, find out how you can kick it up a notch without breaking the bank.Continue Reading

• Virtual disaster recovery strategies in action

  This expert handbook explores how server virtualization can increase flexibility, while ensuring that recovery time objectives are met and hardware requirements stay minimal. Compare how physical and virtual DR differ and learn about the benefits ...Continue Reading

• Spotlight on Hyper-V 3.0 high availability and redundancy

  IT admins will have more help improving high availability with new redundancy and predictive failure analysis features in Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0.Continue Reading

• VMware vShield Manager design raises availability concerns

  One of the major technical kinks that has yet to be worked out in VMware’s vShield virtualization security product line is what happens when the vShield Manager appliance fails.Continue Reading

• Implementing a disaster recovery strategy with open source Xen

  If you use open source Xen, don't let a disaster become just that -- a disaster. To create a solid disaster recovery strategy, back up configuration files and disk storage back end.Continue Reading

• Using redundant network architecture and storage pools for HA

  Building a redundant network architecture and placing all your VMs on a storage pool is an efficient way to achieve high availability in your virtual data center.Continue Reading

• High-availability architecture: Redundancy vs. abstraction

  If you're getting more involved with virtualization, you may want to take another look at your high-availability architecture. Redundancy and abstraction can help prevent problems.Continue Reading

• Virtual disaster recovery and server backup case study

  Kroll Factual Data went with a full virtual disaster recovery solution when its virtual server backup software and tape libraries weren't cutting it anymore.Continue Reading

• Planning for Hyper-V disaster recovery without breaking the bank

  Now IT shops of all sizes can deploy Hyper-V disaster recovery without breaking the bank. Here are the different ways to plan for Hyper-V disaster recovery.Continue Reading

• Data center planning considerations for high availability

  Sure, virtualization brings flexibility, but high-availability data center planning is still crucial. Take full advantage of the benefits of data center high availability.Continue Reading

• Patch management best practices for virtual hosts

  Taking advantage of clusters and creating service levels are two patch management best practices that can keep your virtual hosts up and runningContinue Reading

• Server patch management strategy development tips

  Devising a server patch management strategy for a virtual host can reduce VM downtime, service disruptions and the number of late nights you spend working in the IT department.Continue Reading

• Virtualizing SharePoint 2007 basics

  Microsoft SharePoint is an ideal application for virtualization. But you have to make sure that virtual servers don't create a single point of failure.Continue Reading

• Virtual disaster recovery strategies in action

  Virtualization is changing the disaster recovery landscape. This e-book is a beginner's guide to virtualization with chapters on disaster recovery (DR), test and development, server consolidation, high availability, storage, security and key ...Continue Reading

• Distributed Power Management to bring power efficiency to vSphere

  The Distributed Power Management feature in VMware vSphere will bring benefits to IT shops that suffer from regular server downtime.Continue Reading

• Using P2V backup and restore in a disaster recovery strategy

  With physical-to-virtual (P2V) disk files, you can create a disaster recovery strategy for physical servers, which can be difficult to back up after a disaster. An expert explains how to deploy a P2V backup and restore plan and why you need one.Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery strategies for Hyper-V

  If you don't know about Hyper-V's disaster recovery technologies, you should. An expert explains how to develop a Hyper-V business continuity strategy.Continue Reading

• Automating virtual performance and availability management: Five target areas

  Too many organizations use manual methods to improve virtual performance and availability. But there are five areas where automated tools can improve results: discovery, physical infrastructure monitoring, virtual infrastructure monitoring, ...Continue Reading

• Using virtualization in a disaster recovery strategy

  Now server virtualization is used in disaster recovery (DR) settings, and virtualization for DR can be a great fit and a cost reducer.Continue Reading

• Managing backups in virtual environments: Key architectural considerations

  Get advice on architectural issues in managing backups in virtual environments. Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf gives updates on CPU and I/O bottlenecks, new backup and data protection options, and licensing changes.Continue Reading

• Mitigating storage management pain points in virtual environments

  Get the scoop on storage-for-virtualization products from VMware, Symantec, IBM and others. Find out about issues, such as Input/Output (I/O) performance, backup, disaster recovery and managing with virtual machines (VMs).Continue Reading

• A backup strategy for Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machines: Suspend, snap, resume

  No piece of data is protected unless you have a proper backup strategy for it. That's why the .VHD files used in Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 pose a problem; their size and peculiar properties make backup difficult. In fact, using some standard ...Continue Reading

• Virtual infrastructure management - Step-by-step virtualization

  Tackle the complex challenges of virtual infrastructure management with Alessandro Perilli, including mandatory control of physical and virtual resources availability, usage and access; deployment of disaster recovery solutions; provisioning of new ...Continue Reading