VMware launches ESX Lite

The so-called thin hypervisor, named ESX Server 3i, will be integrated in servers from Dell, IBM, and HP, according to VMware, with unnamed others to follow. The plan is that building virtualisation into the hardware simplifies deployment and management of virtual infrastructure, because it removes the installation step.

ESX Server 3i partitions a physical server into multiple secure and portable virtual machines, said VMware. The vendor claimed that users will have the hypervisor up and running “in a matter of minutes.” According to Tommy Armstrong, VMware’s European marketing manager, 3i allows a company use their preferred hardware OEM and, once booted, the server asks for the admin password and IP address, and is ready to run virtual machines.

VMware claimed that 3i was “the only hypervisor on the market today that does not incorporate a general-purpose operating system, thus freeing it from the many challenges involved in maintaining a general purpose OS.” 3i occupies only 32MB because VMware has removed the OS without affecting the functionality of the hypervisor. VMware reckoned it achieved this by removing the service console, which Armstrong reckoned reduced the footprint by 98 percent. Instead of managing the system locally, it can be accessed via VirtualCenter, VMware’s management tool for virtualised infrastructure.

As well as simplicity, VMware’s claimed that the benefits of this approach include reliability and security.

“Today, VMware is ushering in a new era where virtualisation is not separate from hardware, it is simply how industry-standard servers operate,” said marketing manager Raghu Raghuram. ”We have worked with our partners to integrate ESX Server directly into their hardware. Now customers can turn on their servers and boot directly into a fully-functioning hypervisor to rapidly and easily realise the benefits of virtualisation. We expect this advance to simplify virtualisation and make it accessible to customers of all sises.”

According to the company, users can deploy VMware’s Infrastructure 3 (VI3) products on top of 3i, including VirtualCenter, VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), High Availability (HA), and VMware Consolidated Backup.

Hardware vendors are expected to begin shipping ESX Server 3i within their products by the end of 2007 and over the course of 2008. IBM has already pre-announced such a device.

Virtual Desktop Manager 2

VMware’s updated Virtual Desktop Manager, VDM2, brings higher levels of control and manageability according to the company.

VDM2 is part of VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which provides centralised desktop management and control using VI3 and is tightly integrated with Virtual Center. VDI delivers desktop images to users via virtual machines running on servers in the datacentre, rather than under the desk.

VDM2 connects remote clients to the right desktop, depending on roles and privileges and is designed to meet the security and scalability needs of small and large deployments, said VMware. The product is expected to be generally available later this year.

“The desktop is fundamentally changing,” said desktop division director Jerry Chen. “Our customers are transforming the way they manage their desktop infrastructure, replacing their traditional PCs with centralised desktops that can be more effectively managed and controlled. Users of virtual desktops can enjoy reliability, data protection and disaster recovery capabilities that traditionally have only been available for server applications. In addition, they get the flexibility of being able to access their desktops from many locations and devices.”

“IDC predicts that revenue for desktop virtualisation software will be nearly $2 billion by 2011, and we feel virtual machines for desktop computing is one of the most exciting developments within the technology industry in recent years,” said IDC’s John Humphreys. “We see that there is significant opportunity for organisations to improve the efficiency with which they provide computing resources to their users through the use of virtualised client computing technologies – and with a solution like VDI, organisations have an alternative that not only provides a familiar user experience, but also helps to centralise desktops and improve data security and user productivity.”

Site Recovery Manager

Site Recovery Manager is a new product that’s claimed to improve organisations’ ability to recover their datacentres when disasters and outages occur. SRM enables VI3 users to automate the setting up, testing, and execution of recovery plans, said VMware.

The new product eliminates dependencies between operating systems and hardware and simplifies protection and recovery of systems and data, according to VMware, which has been trailing its competitors in marketing virtualisation as a disaster recovery technology. SRM allows users to create, configure, and manage recovery plans from VirtualCenter, offers automated failover, and easier testing of recovery plans, said the company.

“VMware customers have demonstrated that disaster recovery is one of the killer applications driving adoption of VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Raghuram. “VMware Site Recovery Manager demonstrates our continuing focus on extending the compelling value of the VMware Infrastructure 3 platform for disaster recovery. Site Recovery Manager brings together the capabilities of VMware Infrastructure 3 and our partners’ leading replication technology with its pioneering disaster recovery automation and management capabilities in order to take risk, cost, and complexity out

Technical Track – Vmware Site Recovery Manager

The first session I’ve attended was about the new opportunity offered by Vmware to have a DR orchestrator. Jay Judkowitz, Product Line Manager for DR and Data Protection at Vmware, in what way this add-on facilitate the disaster recovery managers life, automatizing failover in case of disaster and giving the ability to test on a regular basis the DR procedure (with non disruptive testing).

All the process are based on proprietary storage replica command and is orchestrated by Virtual Infrastructure: so we have storage replica and VMware tied together.

Features of SRM are:

• Setup of the workflow (DR plan is stored within Virtual Center, in a virtual runbook)
• Cross sites VC management (VMs get correctly organized on the secondary site, VMs have right CPU and memory allocation after failover, VMs are plugged in the right (v)LAN after failover)
• DR plan change control (rolebased access control, audit trails, recovery and test plans can be exported, changes to DR plan are instantly reflected in the test and failover environments)
• Failover workflow (automate failover with playback of virtual runbook
• Network management (VMs’ IP changes automatically if needed, IP changes could be scripted to reflect the changes into DNS)
• Test workflow (run frequent non -disruptive testing, create a test network, export the results, increase the scope of DR plan, meet the compliance)

In order to use SRM you need to have two sites each with one VCM server. If you have more than two sites you’ll have to work with sites pair.

For now you must use VMFS file system (RDM is experimental). The replication can be done within supported Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage.

VMware ships Site Recovery Manager DR software

VMware Inc. will begin taking orders this week for its disaster recovery management software for virtual machines, called Site Recovery Manager, and start shipping the disaster recovery software in 30 days.

Since previewing the Site Recovery Manager last fall at VMWorld, VMware has been working with storage vendors to create software integration modules called storage replication adapters. These storage replication adapters allow VMware’s VirtualCenter management console to handle the failover and recovery of virtual machines via array-based replication.

The integration will also allow VMware’s VirtualCenter to execute commands against storage arrays at primary and secondary sites during recoveries and enable VirtualCenter-generated metadata about virtual machines to be replicated, along with system and application data.

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EMC, Dell/EqualLogic, LeftHand Networks, NetApp and FalconStor will support VMware Site Recovery Manager when it becomes generally available in June. Vendors that will be adding support for the product later include Hitachi Data Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and 3PARdata. SunGard recently announced support for Site Recovery Manager, and plans to add cloud-based secondary data center offerings for small shops.

VMware does not support host-based replication yet. “We have had customer inquiries about supporting server-based replication,” said Jon Bock, VMware senior manager of product marketing. “But we’re going to be thinking about the size of most host-based replication environments. With a large number of virtual machines, it might not really work.”

VMware’s target audience for Site Recovery Manager is organizations running large numbers of non-mission-critical virtual machines, Bock said. “This is for users with large amounts of virtual machines they want to protect as a group,” he said. “For critical servers, geoclustering and other high-availability partner products make more sense.”

Site Recovery Manager is a separate download, but users also need VMware’s VirtualCenter to provide an interface to the software. Software integration modules must be downloaded separately from storage vendors. Once installed on a server, organizations can enter policies and an order of operations for their disaster recovery plans. If there’s a site failure, administrators can log onto VirtualCenter and hit a button that says Run to have the recovery process carried out automatically.

Site Recovery Manager will require users to log on for disaster recovery plans to execute, Bock said. “If we’re talking about the failure of one mission-critical server, it does make sense for users not to want it to wait to failover, but we’re focused on cases of a whole-site failure where there may be specific processes for declaring a disaster and getting approval to proceed with recovery plans,” he said. Customers can also use Site Recovery Manager to create an isolated network and use snapshot data to do a “what if” workup of disaster recovery plans or to conduct a live test that doesn’t impact production systems.

Bock said VMware will next look at expanding the set-of-use cases for the product, including the possibilities of adding automation and features specifically for branch office failover to a central data center.

As VMware looks to expand beyond the hypervisor and broaden server virtualization’s appeal beyond the estimated 60% of the market that has it installed, there is speculation about VMware’s intentions when it comes to its storage partners. VMware could conceivably come out with its own host-based replication product and crush the storage players’ stake in that space.

But Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Bowker said that’s unlikely. “So could Microsoft, couldn’t they?” he said. “Users were already basically doing this with scripts – and you still can. VMware has identified an opportunity and stepped in to develop a framework so customers don’t have to go through a long and tedious process.”

Still, there seems to be confusion among users as to which data protection features will fit where in their environments. “I’d like to find out more about how this plays with NetApp’s Data Protection Manager,” said Tom Becchetti, systems engineer for a medical manufacturing company. Becchetti said he’s been evaluating the NetApp software for similar replication and data protection automation.

Accelerate recovery and ensure successful recovery by automating the recovery process and eliminating the complexity of managing and testing recovery plans. VMware Site Recovery Manager makes disaster recovery rapid, reliable and manageable so that you can meet recovery objectives. By eliminating complex manual recovery steps and enabling non-disruptive testing of recovery plans, Site Recovery Manager removes the risk and worry from disaster recovery, helping you protect all of your important systems and applications.

Take the Disaster Out of Disaster Recovery

Easily manage and implement your recovery plan with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

Build, Manage and Execute Reliable
Disaster Recovery Plans

As an integrated element of VMware Infrastructure, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager helps you :

• Accelerate recovery for the virtual environment through automation
• Ensure reliable recovery by enabling non-disruptive testing
• Simplify recovery by eliminating complex manual recovery steps and centralizing management of recovery plans

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Accelerate Recovery

Ensure that you are able to meet your recovery time objectives (RTOs) by automating the recovery process.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager eliminates the slow manual steps of recovery, turning the complex paper runbooks associated with traditional disaster recovery into an integrated part of your virtual infrastructure management.

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Ensure Reliable Recovery

Eliminate common causes of failure during recovery and make it possible to test your recovery plans thoroughly and easily.

By automating recovery, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager eliminates error-prone manual steps in the recovery process and ensures that recovery procedures will be consistently executed as intended. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager also makes it easy to execute non-disruptive tests of recovery plans within an isolated testing environment so that you can ensure that they are up to date and will execute successfully.

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Simplify Disaster Recovery

Simplify and centralize the process of creating, updating and managing recovery plans.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager guides users through the process of building, managing and executing disaster recovery plans. It integrates seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure and VMware vCenter Server to make recovery plans significantly easier to manage and update.

It also integrates easily with storage replication software from leading storage vendors to simplify the use of advanced replication software with VMware Infrastructure.

VMware Site Recovery Manager simplifies disaster recovery

TAGS: Virtualization Apps/Tools

VMware has announced its new tool for disaster recovery management and automation of a virtual infrastructure. VMware Site Recovery Manager, part of VMware’s suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

While traditional disaster recovery plans are laborious and time-consuming to set up and maintain, VMware SRM combined with virtualization technology makes the entire implementation of a recovery site a much more inexpensive and simplified process. Traditional non-virtualized systems have extensive dependencies on hardware configurations, which make consistent automation of the process extremely difficult if not impossible. Virtualization removes that dependency. And virtualization and SRM also allow the IT department to actually test the disaster recovery plan without downtime, something else that was previously determined impossible.

“Effective disaster recovery has been a significant challenge for many organizations,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “With the delivery of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware removes hurdles associated with disaster recovery planning and implementation. Through our innovative disaster recovery testing, management, and automation capabilities, we bring predictability back into the hands of IT and help eliminate risks associated with human error.”
Site Recovery Manager works seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure, VMware VirtualCenter, and replication software from storage partners to provide integrated disaster recovery management and automation. It provides:

• Integrated management of disaster recovery plans. Create, update and document recovery plans directly from VMware VirtualCenter.
• Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans. Execute automated tests of recovery plans in an isolated testing environment using the recovery plan that would be used in an actual failover. Hardware configuration dependencies are eliminated and testing can occur without impacting production systems.
• Automated failover and recovery. Automate execution of the recovery process, eliminating many of the slow and unreliable manual processes common in traditional disaster recovery.

With the release of the product, VMware’s parent company, EMC, is one of the first vendors to officially announce support for Site Recovery Manager. Other vendors showing support for the product include 3Par, Dell, FalconStor Software, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LeftHand Networks, and NetApp.

Site Recovery Manager is priced much like VMware Infrastructure: Based on the number of processors in the servers. SRM can be purchased as a standalone product or purchased as part of VMware’s Management and Automation Bundle which includes two-processor versions of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager.