cloud virtualized server recovery

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IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery i

The case for cloud-baseddisaster recoveryCloud technologies help meet the need for quickerrestoration of service

IBM Global Technology Services IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery


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2 The case for cloud-based disaster recovery

Contents

2 Introduction

3 The constraints of traditional disaster recovery methods

4 The promise of cloud-based recovery

5 What to look for in a cloud-based disaster

recovery solution

6 IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery:

an intelligent choice

7 Why IBM?

7 For more information

In an around-the clock business world, organizations need

nearly instantaneous failover and failback of critical business

applications. Disasters, and, more often, disruptions, do occur.

Hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and fires are to be feared and

accounted for in enterprise business continuity and disaster

recovery plans. However, organizations must also prepare for

the far more likely event of disruptionsthe hardware failures,

security breaches and run-of-the-mill power outages that can

compromise access to business-critical applications.

A recent study by the Aberdeen Group indicates that,

depending on the maturity of their recovery operations,

organizations can experience up to 4.4 business disruptions

per year, with restore times ranging from one hour to more

than nine hours.The business cost of this downtime averages

$138,000 per hour.1As noted in the 2012 IBM Global

Reputational Risk and IT Study2, brand damage is equally

significant: service disruption can harm an organizations

reputation, especially in the online marketplace and in a world

where opinions are shaped by social media.

Traditional disaster recovery solutions do not always meet

organizations need for reduced recovery times and improved

reliability. They are slow to recover, complex to implement,

and hard to manage. They require the completion of separate

procedures for systems, data disks, and applicationsto

say nothing of separate procedures for physical and virtual

servers. No wonder then that chief information officers and

IT managers increasingly look to cloud-based recovery

either on its own or as a complement to traditional disasterrecovery methodsto help them meet the needs for nearly

instantaneous failover and failback.

As Forrester reports, two thirds of enterprises recently

surveyed are interested in, or have already adopted, disaster

recovery as a service (DRaaS).3And, perhaps because of clouds

ability to provide enterprise class disaster recovery capabilities

to smaller businesses, the interest is also high among midsize

companies. Thirty percent of midsize companies will have

cloud-based recovery operations by 2014, Gartner reports.4

IBM posits that clouds role in disaster recovery solutions

will increase as cloud capabilities evolve and the use of cloudtechnologies becomes increasingly widespread.

This document will discuss:

The constraints of traditional disaster recovery methods

The ways in which cloud-based disaster recovery solutions

improve hot site recovery operations

Characteristics of an intelligent cloud-based disaster

recovery solution

The features and benets of IBM SmartCloud Virtualized

Server Recovery (VSR)


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IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery 3

The constraints of traditional disaster

recovery methodsDisaster recovery has been a difficult process historically,

and challenges have only increased as IT infrastructures have

grown more complex and heterogeneous (see Figure 1). When

using physical servers to back up and recover physical servers,

organizations have traditionally chosen between dedicated

and shared infrastructure models. In the dedicated model,

an organizations IT infrastructure is mirrored at an off-sitedisaster recovery center. Since this infrastructure is dedicated

solely to one organization, it is ready to be called upon in the

event of disruption or disaster. The dedicated model provides

the best possible recovery time available via traditional

methods because hardware and software are preconfigured

to the organizations specifications. However, this recovery

method is not ideal.

First, best possible recovery time does not mean an

acceptable recovery timehours can pass before the

organizations servers, along with its data and applications, are

recovered and ready for business. Organizations face particular

challenges in restoring environments comprised of dissimilar

hardware and multiple operating systems, further lengthening

recovery times. This situation is unacceptable in an always

on business world. Second, the recovery process is dependent

on regularly receiving up-to-date information from the

organizations data centerwhich typically entails deploying

manpower to transport backup tapes from the data center to

the disaster recovery hot site. Third, this approach is a less-

than-optimal use of expensive resources: hardware sits idle

when not being used for recovery. Even worse, IT staff may

become tempted to use this idle capacity for other purposes,rendering it unavailable in the event of disruption or disaster.

Figure 1. Recovery challenges on physical infrastructures include speed, costand the risk of failure when recovering on unlike hardware.

A shared model, in which the recovery infrastructure is split

among multiple organizations, is more cost-effective. However,

it has the same problems as a dedicated infrastructure, only

more pronounced. For example, in the event of disruption, the

hardware, operating systems, data and applications replicated

at the disaster site must be configured from the ground up to

match the organizations IT site. This process could take days.

Recovery challenges on

physical infrastructure:

Need for faster,

more reliable recovery

High cost to

maintain redundant

in-house servers

Risk of failure recovering

on unlike hardware

Inability to align RPO

and RTO with

business requirements


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The trend toward virtualization has added further complexity

to the server restoration process, whether a server environment

is entirely virtualized or, as is more likely, contains a mix of

virtualized and physical assets. The architecture needed for the

restoration of an entirely virtualized environment is in itself

difficult to design, engineer, implement and manage. These

challenges are heightened, sometimes becoming impossible to

meet, when trying to recover applications running in a mixed

physical/virtual environment. The risk of restoration failures issignificant in these situations.

Whether an organization is restoring physical, virtual or

hybrid physical/virtual environments, additional challenges

arise in the fields of complexity and cost. Traditional

restoration solutions are often complex, requiring multiple

steps and specialized IT skills. These solutions typically can

not be scaled to meet demand. They are costly, requiring large

capital outlays for solution development, implementation

and management. They come with unpredictable operating

expenses, and travel expenses for moving backup tapes

and the professionals that manage themto off-siterestore facilities. Because of these expenses, traditional

recovery solutions are often impractical for small and

mid-sized businesses.

The promise of cloud-based recoveryAware of the complexities, costs and inadequacies of traditional

recovery methods, many IT executives look toward cloud

computing to replace or enhance their existing recovery

operations. The complexity of designing, implementing and

managing a cloud-based recovery solution in-house can lead

these executives to contract with a third-party provider for

disaster recovery as a service. The best of these third-party

solutions improve over traditional recovery solutions in several

ways. First, they are much faster, reducing recovery times from

hours or days to just minutes, thereby significantly limiting

business outage due to disruption or disaster. Second, these

solutions are more reliable, reducing the risk of data loss or

inability to recover operations because of human error. Third,

they eliminate many of the complex, manual steps required

by traditional recovery solutions, allowing organizations to

quickly recover servers, data, disks and applications.

Cloud-based solutions can also help organizations optimize

their recovery investments. Because the provider, rather

than the client, owns the hardware required, organizations

no longer need to pay for hardware that sits idle except for

times of disruption or disaster. Cloud-based disaster recovery

solutions are also easily scalable, allowing organizations

to expand or contract recovery capabilities on demand, so

organizations dont have to pay for services they dont need.

This scalability can be especially beneficial for small or

medium-sized businesses.

Since these solutions also provide remote access tools, they

eliminate the need for physical transfers of tapes to offsite

disaster recovery hot sites, and the travel and transport costs

associated with those transfers. Finally, because they do not

require hardware purchases or in-house specialized recovery

knowledge, cloud-based disaster recovery solutions give small

and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to adopt the type

of robust continuity and disaster recovery solutions that may

have previously been beyond their reach, achieving the same

type of recovery times, recovery points and security levels as

large enterprises.


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What to look for in a cloud-based disaster

recovery solutionRecognizing clouds promise, many enterprise technology

vendors and cloud service providers have entered the disaster-

recovery-as-a-service market. Of course, not all these solutions

are created equal. With decades of experience in managing

backup and recovery operations for clients across the world,

IBM developed a set of attributes that ideal cloud-based

disaster recovery solutions should possess. In addition to thecharacteristics discussed previously, IBM recommends that the

solution should offer:

Recovery of a server environment that includes a variety of

hardware types, a variety of operating systems, and a mix of

physical and virtual servers

Failover/failback capabilities that can provide recovery

within minutes

Co-existence with traditional disaster recovery operations

that the enterprise wishes to leave in place

Use of the cloud for regular and rigorous testing of disaster

recovery plans

Tiered service levels so that recovery timesand cost of

the servicescan be selected based on an applications

importance to the business or tolerance for downtime (see

figure 2)

Subscription-based pricing for predictable costs, requiring

users to pay for only the virtual machines they need

Figure 2.IBM VSR offers three recovery options: Gold, Silver and Bronze.Applications at the Bronze service level can be provisioned within six hours,while applications at the Gold service level can be recovered in a matterof minutes.

A web-based portal that organizations can use to access and

manage the recovery service

A highly secure multi-tenant environment

Virtualized Server Recovery:

provisioning times of tiered service levels

Price

Higher

Lower

VSR Goldminutes per server

VSR Silver60-90 minutes

VSR Bronze6 hours

Traditional hotsite recovery

Hours

0 6 12 18 24


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IBM Virtualized Server Recovery:

an intelligent choiceIBM Virtualized Server Recovery is a fully-managed

cloud service designed for organizations that need faster,

more reliable and more affordable recovery of their IT

infrastructures. This service has all the characteristics of an

ideal cloud-based server recovery solution discussed previously,

while also offering four features that provide significant

additional value to organizations evaluating cloud serviceproviders. These differentiators are:

1. The variety of server environments supported. This

capability makes it easier to implement a cloud-based

recovery solution, regardless of an organizations data

center mix

2. Increased speed and reliability

3. Tiered service levels, allowing users to pick the most

affordable options for their business needs

4. A web-based portal for ease of management, disaster

recovery testing and real-time failover and failback.

Variety of server environments supported

Unlike some competitive oerings that support only physical

servers, IBM VSR offers support for physical, virtual, and

hybrid environmentsregardless of the hypervisor in

usealong with environments of varied hardware types and

operating systems. This cloud service can also be integrated

with existing infrastructure recovery services for a complete

and holistic disaster recovery solution.

Increased speed and reliability

The reliability and speed of IBM recovery servicesproviding

recovery in only minutes in many casesis accomplished by

incorporating world-class automation tools and leading-edge

recovery techniques to reduce manual recovery steps. Cross-

server consistency helps applications running across multiple

servers to come back in tandem, further aiding in the speedy

recovery of important business programs.

Tiered service levels

IBM VSR also helps organizations optimize their recovery

investment through a pay-as-you-go cost structure with

recovery points and recovery times that are significantly

better than those offered by even sophisticated dedicated

backup infrastructures. Three service levelsGold, Silver and

Bronzeallow organizations to differentiate backup services

by application priority. This choice of service levels helps

enterprises optimize return on investment: in paying less fornon-critical applications, mission-critical applications will have

nearly continuous availability. Following is a closer look at

each option.

Tiered service

level

Description

Gold This option is appropriate for mission-critical

servers requiring immediate recovery. It provides

dedicated virtual servers for failover in minutes.

Actual failover time depends on the number of

client servers and volumes in play. A significant

benefit of this option is that the size of the

protected volumes does not affect recovery time;

a two-terabyte image will be recovered just as

quickly as a two-gigabyte imagein minutes.

Server failover completions are staggered. Every

24 hours, 96 replication snapshots are captured.

Silver This option provides failover initiation within one

hour; server failover completions are staggered.

Twenty four snapshots are captured every 24

hours. Silver is a cost ef fective option that helps

organizations meet recovery needs for servers

running Tier 2 applications.

Bronze Provisioning for Bronze-level ser vices

typically occurs within six hours. Bronzeoffers no replication. It is designed to provide

a migration path from traditional hot site to

cloud recovery services.


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Web-based portal

Along with the variety of server environments supported;

improved speed, security and reliability; and tiered service

levels, the IBM web-based management portal is a significant

differentiator. After installing the Virtualized Server Recovery

software onto their servers, administrators can access the IBM

VSR portal via the Internet, and select the server disks that

need to be protected and replicated. Once the environment

is defined through the portal, the administrator can view theprotection status of the servers, generate reports and conduct

other administrative tasks. Frequent and rigorous disaster

recovery testing can also be performed through the portal,

helping the organization prepare for the unexpected.

Why IBM?With IBM VSR, organizations can benefit from a single

vendor to recover both virtualized and physical server

environmentscreating a fast, cost-effective resiliency and

recovery solution for almost all scenarios. IBM has the depth

and breadth of expertise to provide this service. We have

more than 50 years of experience with business resilience and

information protection. We began offering physical-to-virtual

server recovery solutions in 2009, debuting Virtualized Server

Recovery in 2012. Cloud services are offered from many sites

in IBM global network of resiliency centers, operating in more

than 70 countries. To craft cloud solutions, IBM professionals

leverage extensive expertise gained from deploying cloud

solutions to organizations of virtually all sizes, then managing

those solutions. IBM deploys advanced automation, cloud

technologies and security tools to provide organizations with

a solution that is designed to securely meet their IT recovery

needs. Our global presence helps to reduce network latency,

while helping organizations to manage local data residency

compliance regulations.

It is this depth of experience and technological reach that helps

differentiate IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recoveryin the cloud-based disaster recovery services marketplace.

Our clients experience the IBM difference in the reliability

and speed of our server recovery solutions; in our ability to

support mixed physical/virtualized environments and an array

of operating systems; and in our cost-saving tiered service

levels. These aspects of IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server

Recovery help organizations minimize business disruptions

and more easily cope with the demands of an always-on

business world.

For more informationWant to learn more about cloud-based disaster recovery? Read

aninterview with IBM disaster recovery experts

and our white paper,Virtualizing disaster recovery using cloud

computing. For more information, call

1-800 IBM-7080 or visit the following website:

ibm.com/services/continuity
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Copyright IBM Corporation 2013

IBM CorporationNew Orchard RoadArmonk, NY 10504

Produced in the United States of AmericaJanuary 2013

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and IBM SmartCloud are trademarks ofInternational Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictionsworldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBMor other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on theWeb at Copyright and trademark information atibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and maybe changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in everycountry in which IBM operates.

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THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDEDAS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS ORIMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIESOF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULARPURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-

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The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws andregulations applicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice orrepresent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that theclient is in compliance with any law or regulation. Statements regardingIBMs future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawalwithout notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

1 Datacenter Downtime: How Much Does it Really Cost?, AberdeenGroup, March, 2012

2 Reputational risk and IT: Findings from the 2012 IBM GlobalReputational Risk and IT Study, IBM, 2012

3 Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Barriers And Drivers In The EnterpriseForrester Research, 2012

4 Gartner Says 30 Percent of Midsize Companies Will Use Recovery-as-a-Service by 2014, Gartner, 2011

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