Software Company Serving Educational Institutions Uses SIOS’ Cost-Effective Data Replication And Disaster Recovery Solution For Continuous Data Protection

The much anticipated Windows Server 2008 R2 became available in late October. VISUCATE became one of many small businesses to deploy Microsoft Hyper-V and enjoy its new features such as live migration. The company required a data replication and disaster recovery solution. One that was reasonably priced and delivered first-class protection.

In an effort to complete its set-up, VISUCATE wanted a business continuity platform that met its small business expectations. They took advantage of the high availability features of Windows Server Failover Clustering. However, 5fhbvd VISUCATE needed additional assurances that a loss of critical data or downtime would not compromise its software sales. To address these specific data replication hurdles, VISUCATE turned to SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

The Challenge

They required an affordable, uncomplicated and robust data replication and disaster recovery solution to protect its new Hyper-V set-up. To prevent any downtime, the company needed its servers to replicate and maintain their operational capabilities. If one server fails, the other server is configured to take over to sustain operations, maximize uptime and assure user productivity. The joint solution of Microsoft Hyper-V with Windows Server Failover Clustering and SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition addressed those business requirements essential for VISUCATE as well as any organization intent on overcoming this challenge.

VISUCATE Maintains Hyper-V Availability, Business Continuity with SIOS DataKeeper®

VISUCATE deployed Windows Server 2008 R2 on two physical servers with the Hyper-V role enabled. The company uses Windows Server Failover Clustering and SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to provide replication and failover of the virtual machines. With the Hyper-V deployment, VISUCATE’s five virtual machines were installed across both servers. Three in one server and two on the other server.

By keeping an operational Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine synchronized between two physical servers, SIOS DataKeeper enables disaster recovery without the recovery and downtimes typically associated with traditional back-up and restore technology. Realtime continuous replication of active Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines ensures that in the event of any downtime impacting VISUCATE set-up, the replicated virtual machine can be automatically brought into service with minimal or no data loss. VISUCATE considered several options for a failover cluster solution. The company dismissed the option of creating a cluster with either a lowcost SAN or NAS/file server. If the SAN in that configuration crashed, the entire set-up would fail.

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition reduces the cost of deploying clusters by eliminating the need for a SAN. It also increases the availability of virtual machines and applications by eliminating the single point of a failure that the SAN represents in a traditional shared storage cluster.

Benefits

SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition allows companies such as VISUCATE to build “shared-nothing” and geographically dispersed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters. By eliminating the requirement for shared storage, companies can protect against both planned and unplanned downtime for servers and storage. Also, the use of SIOS DataKeeper with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines allows for non-disruptive disaster recovery testing. By simply accessing the replicated virtual machine in the disaster recovery site, VISUCATE and other companies can segment a virtual network separate from the production network. Also, it would be able to start the replicated virtual machine for disaster recovery testing. An administrator can perform complete data replication and disaster recovery solution testing without impacting the production site.

In addition to support for Hyper-V clusters, SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition enables multi-site clusters for all other Microsoft cluster resource types. This includes SQL Server, Exchange, File/Print and DHCP.

To find out more about SIOS products, go here
To read about how SIOS helped VISUCATE achieve data replication and disaster recovery solution, go here