12 September 2008

There are many advantages to virtualisation, but these are neutralised unless they are protected against infrastructure failure

Bob Williamson, SteelEye Technologies The rush to launch software solutions that support virtualisation technologies continues. Business continuity systems vendor SteelEye Technology has added support  for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to its DataKeeper product.

The need for virtual server protection is increasing as IT organisations consolidate workloads using virtualisation software. Market research firm IDC recently estimated that the virtualisation market would expand from US$1.8 billion in 2007 to US$5.3 billion in 2012. As business-critical applications and data increasingly reside within virtual machines, protection against both planned and unplanned outages is a business imperative. SteelEye says DataKeeper addresses these challenges and provides customers with a highly available, disaster-proof IT environment running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

“There are many advantages to virtualisation,” said SteelEye’s Bob Williamson. “But these are neutralised unless they are protected against infrastructure failure. In tandem with Microsoft's industry-leading technology, we have created an affordable, seamless solution to these availability demands. By taking the heavy lifting and guesswork out of disaster recovery, we are empowering our joint customers with significant value and peace of mind.”

“Through server consolidation and business continuity, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V helps mutual customers achieve better resource utilisation and reduce IT costs. It also provides them with greater agility and flexibility in their operations,” said David Greschler, director of integrated virtualisation strategy at Microsoft. “With the addition of DataKeeper, customers can maximise the uptime of critical business resources residing within Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines.”

By keeping a running Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine in sync with a standby VM in an alternate location, DataKeeper enables disaster recovery without the data loss typically associated with traditional backup and restore technology.  DataKeeper Cluster Edition allows administrators to build ‘shared-nothing’ and geographically dispersed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters. By eliminating the requirement for shared storage, the administrator can protect against both planned and unplanned downtime of servers and storage. The use of DataKeeper in tandem with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VMs allows for non-disruptive disaster recovery testing.