Operating system-level server virtualization solutions (such as SWsoft’s Virtuozzo) hold an answer. These solutions utilize a different architecture and offer lower overhead than typical virtualization technologies, creating isolated and secure virtual servers on a standard Linux or Windows operating system on a single physical server. For this reason, they are an ideal component of disaster recovery solutions, providing both the lowest cost and the highest density virtualized servers available.

Many supporting technologies required for a disaster recovery solution work well in conjunction with OS-level virtualization. The virtualization software manages the virtual infrastructure and provides many flexible options and capabilities that support a disaster recovery environment and address the RTO component of the solution or plan. The next step is managing the data from the original server. There are many available solutions and capabilities that reflect different levels of RPOs.

What are the basic components to a disaster recovery solution?

• The originating server/application/data.
• The technology to replicate or backup the application and data.
• The ability to recover or failover the server.

OS-level Virtualization and Always Available Configurations: OS-level virtualization can be a crucial part of an always available disaster recovery solution. The originating server, housed on a SAN, may use the SAN to replicate to a virtualized server. Once a server fails, the SAN will re-reroute all traffic to the still available virtualized server. While “always available” remains a subset of disaster recovery solutions only for mission critical applications, this approach can bring the recovery server cost component considerably lower.

OS-level Virtualization and Fast Recovery Configurations: The fast recovery solutions are gaining the most attention now as companies determine that they do have the ability to take some data and time loss in their systems. OS-level server virtualization is really ideal for fast recovery solutions because the virtualized servers reside on top of a running operating system. The footprint for the virtualized server is small, so its recovery time is the amount of time to load the application and data into memory, with no time at all required for starting the OS.