A global enterprise software company recently announced the next generation of their workload management and disaster recovery tools to help IT administrators better meet user demands for data access anytime, anywhere.  I recently caught up with Mike Robinson, senior manager, Solution Strategy at NetIQ to learn more about the company's latest product updates.

Mike Robinson:  NetIQ is a global, enterprise software company with a relentless focus on customer success. Our portfolio includes scalable, automated solutions for Identity, Security, Access, Governance, Systems and Application, Service, and Workload Management that help organizations securely deliver, measure and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.

VMblog:  NetIQ just announced a new generation of PlateSpin workload management and disaster recovery products.  What specific features are provided in this new generation of products?

Robinson:  Our new generation of PlateSpin workload management and disaster recovery products includes PlateSpin Forge 4, PlateSpin Protect 11 and PlateSpin Migrate 11. These latest versions provide fast and efficient disaster recovery, server consolidation, and server migration capabilities for today's virtual and physical server workloads. And earlier this year we released PlateSpin Recon 4, which rounds out the portfolio by providing the intelligence & analysis for server consolidation and disaster recovery.

VMblog:  How are the PlateSpin workload management and disaster recovery products offering a range of solutions for both physical and virtual environments?

Robinson:  In speaking with our customers, we know how important it is to them to have a solution that is designed to protect both physical and virtual workloads, running Windows and Linux operating systems.  NetIQ's PlateSpin product began as the industry's first automated physical to virtual (P2V) server consolidation tool. The new generation of PlateSpin products - PlateSpin Forge 4, PlateSpin Migrate 11 and PlateSpin Protect 11- that we just announced continue that rich tradition of connecting the dots between physical and virtual workloads. 

PlateSpin Forge 4 now supports the latest OS and hypervisor versions from Microsoft, VMware, and others, providing an all-in-one disaster recovery hardware appliance that protects both physical and virtual workloads, and delivers exceptional recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) performance at an extremely affordable price point.

PlateSpin Migrate 11 extends NetIQ's proprietary high-speed block-based transfer protocols and Server Sync technology to the latest hypervisor versions from Microsoft, VMware, and others, and to newer UEFI/GPT physical servers with large (2 TB+) system drives, and offers true anywhere-to-anywhere (to and from physical, virtual, and image) migrations, rather than just single-platform physical-to-virtual conversions.

And, finally, PlateSpin Protect 11 protects physical and virtual servers with a single DR solution, either within a standalone VMware virtual environment, or by extending the capabilities of VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM). When used with SRM, PlateSpin Protect 11 enables users to replicate and protect physical servers alongside virtual machines in their SRM environment.

VMblog:  What can IT professional expect when deploying the new generation of PlateSpin products?

Robinson:  Today's enterprises are challenged to meet increasingly aggressive RPOs and RTOs, while protecting more server workloads with stagnant or even shrinking budgets. And businesses, executives, and users alike have almost zero tolerance for downtime. What's more, limitations of existing solutions prevent IT departments from backing up both their physical and virtual workloads to the same infrastructure. When combined with PlateSpin Recon 4, the latest version of NetIQ's planning and analysis tool, the PlateSpin family allows IT professionals to set and maintain accurate service-level agreements (SLAs) for disaster recovery (DR), protect physical servers in an increasingly virtual world, and speed up transfers while reducing downtime during server migration.

VMblog:  How are the PlateSpin products addressing the business user's demand for data anytime, anywhere?

Robinson:  In today's ever-connected world, employees expect to have access to corporate data instantly from their smartphones, tablets or other device of choice.  Those expectations feed the aggressive recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) IT administrators are pushing to meet.  These latest features in PlateSpin Protect, PlateSpin Forge and PlateSpin Migrate, coupled with PlateSpin Recon 4, provide a combined toolset that allows today's professionals to plan for, manage and support any server consolidation, migration, or disaster recovery scenario that can impact the ability to support today's business users.

VMblog:  When will the PlateSpin products be generally available and can you share any details on pricing?

Robinson:  All of the PlateSpin products are generally available. PlateSpin Migrate 11 is available from $295 USD and PlateSpin Protect 11 is available from $1500 USD. PlateSpin Forge 4 starts at $39,400 USD for the 300 Series 10-workload appliance (without storage). Pricing includes priority maintenance.

##

Once again, thanks to Mike Robinson, senior manager, Solution Strategy at NetIQ, for taking time out to answer a few questions for VMblog.com.