Today, businesses of all sizes are potential victims of
disasters. Disasters come in different forms, and contrary to a common
misconception, downtime is not always caused by natural catastrophes. Power
outages, hardware failure, human error, viruses, and data corruption happen,
and in most cases, they are beyond our control. While the majority of disasters
cannot be prevented, businesses can mitigate the risks by maximizing their site
recovery preparedness. To understand more about site recovery and its role in
ensuring uninterrupted business operation, I reached out to Bruce Talley, CEO of
NAKIVO.
VMblog: Can you start off by providing a little background on
NAKIVO?
Bruce Talley: NAKIVO is a fast-growing data protection software vendor
based in the US. The company was founded in 2012 with a flagship product
designed for VMware backup and replication.
Since that time our focus expanded to provide comprehensive data protection for
other platforms as well, including Hyper-V backup and AWS
EC2 backup. As of today, thousands of businesses in over 130
countries rely on NAKIVO Backup & Replication as their primary solution for
protection of their virtualized environments.
Over the course of our development, we have released more than
20 versions of the product, constantly improving the solution to better meet
the needs of our valued customers. Our users are becoming increasingly aware of
the importance of effective site recovery processes. That's why we are now
dedicating greater efforts to enhancing and developing relevant functionality. With
its Site Recovery feature, v8.0 has taken NAKIVO Backup & Replication to a
whole new level in terms of DR capabilities.
VMblog: What does successful site recovery depend on and what are
the challenges of ensuring effective site recovery for virtualized
environments?
Talley: I would say successful site recovery depends on a
combination of factors. The ability to set the right priorities, having
properly trained IT stuff, a strong site recovery plan, and regular testing are
all important components. That being said, I firmly believe the key to
successful site recovery lies in choosing the right solution for handling
unexpected events.
For successful site recovery operations, it is critical to
have a solution that offers great performance, includes complete site recovery
functionality (not just standard backups), allows recovery scenarios to be
tested, and is easy to use. If all these elements are in place, a company
should have no trouble getting their business-critical resources back up and
running.
VMblog: Can you name the best site recovery practices that
enterprises with virtualized infrastructures should follow?
Talley: First of all, businesses utilizing virtualization in their
IT infrastructures should keep in mind that virtual environments are different
from traditional ones, and thus their protection requires a different approach.
It's amazing how many businesses continue to rely on data protection solutions
designed solely for physical environments, which are simply not effective in
virtualization. Switching to virtualization-aware solutions is not optional but
obligatory.
Secondly, site recovery activities should not be limited to
backups only. Site recovery is a complex and comprehensive process that involves
much more than just recovering from a backup. For example, if a local incident
were to occur, you could easily lose your entire primary site, including hardware,
backup software, networks, configurations, and everything that makes up your
production infrastructure. This would render your backups useless, even if you
did have them.
Educate your staff about site recovery to gain their support
and ensure prompt reaction in the event of a disruption. Businesses with large
infrastructures should never rely on one person to be responsible for the
success of site recovery. In the ideal scenario, there should be an automated
site recovery plan; your staff members should know which button to hit in order
to launch the plan. Then, simply let the solution do the rest.
Regardless of the scale of your infrastructure, if you lose
your business-critical data or experience downtime, you can expect to lose
revenue. The majority of disasters cannot be foreseen or prevented, but you can
ensure that you are adequately prepared for them to minimize downtime and
mitigate the consequences. That's why a site recovery plan matters. If your
solution allows for automation of site recovery plans, that's even better, as
you can save time, effort, and money.
In your site recovery plan, consider what parts of your
infrastructure should be recovered first; not all of your VMs are equally
critical for continuous business operation. While devising a site recovery
plan, set the right priorities with regards to your RTOs.
Site recovery plans must be tested. Having a plan in place
does not mean it works. The first time you test your site recovery plan, you are
likely to find out that not everything went exactly as expected. A plan that
isn't sufficiently tested makes recovery from an actual disaster much more
unlikely. Identify the problem areas, fix what went wrong, and repeat. Develop
a habit of running tests on a regular basis, as changes in your infrastructure,
environment, data loads, and personnel can affect the execution of your plan.
VMblog: When choosing the right site recovery solution, what are
the considerations?
Talley: The rule of thumb here is to never buy before you try the
solution. When you find a product that seems to meet your initial expectations,
make sure there is a free trial. This is how you can ascertain whether the
vendor actually delivers everything they promised.
Basically, I believe performance, functionality, automation,
usability, scalability, and ability to test are the top factors to consider when
choosing a site recovery solution. If the solution includes all of these and comes
with an affordable price tag, then it's the right choice.
VMblog: How can NAKIVO Backup & Replication assist with DR?
Talley: As I already mentioned, v8.0 of NAKIVO Backup &
Replication includes a new feature designed to assist with DR. Our solution now
offers a complete set of functionality for automation and orchestration of site
recovery activities. Users can combine conditions and actions (including
VM failover with re-IP and network mapping) to build their own custom Site
Recovery jobs, then run them whenever needed. This way, they can ensure
uninterrupted business operation, or recovery within the shortest RTOs.
Site recovery jobs can be run in just a few clicks. You
don't waste any time and can proceed directly to disaster recovery
activities once disaster strikes. This is useful in the event of a planned
migration or a suspected upcoming power outage, or if you simply wish to test
your SR procedures.
Our Site Recovery feature is incredibly flexible; multiple
jobs can be created to cover different scenarios, and jobs can run on a
schedule in test mode. The feature is intuitive and user-friendly. This is
crucial, since I've recently found out that almost 40% of IT professionals
believe that site recovery solutions are too difficult to use. This is certainly
not the case with NAKIVO Backup & Replication, as our site recovery tool,
like the rest of the product's functionality, was designed with ease of use in
mind.
VMblog: Finally, how is your site recovery functionality different from
what is offered by the competition?
Talley: One major factor that sets us apart from the competition is NAKIVO
Backup & Replication's affordability. All site recovery automation and
orchestration functionality is built into our data protection product, which
costs significantly less than solutions designed specifically for DR. While it
was already a cost-effective solution, NAKIVO Backup & Replication now offers
users even more value.
Moreover, while the licensing policy of most solutions on
the market is based on a per-VM basis,
NAKIVO Backup & Replication users are charged per CPU socket,
letting them pay only a fraction of the cost.
Again, although the modern market offers various DR
solutions, many IT professionals still do not have one in place because they
are sure these solutions are too confusing in terms of user experience. NAKIVO
Backup & Replication includes a simple and intuitive web interface,
allowing even novice users to master the SR functionality with ease.
Another distinct advantage is our integration with NAS
servers such as those sold by ASUSTOR, NETGEAR ReadyNAS, QNAP, Synology, and Western
Digital. Users can install NAKIVO Backup & Replication directly on
supported NAS servers for a powerful combination of site recovery functionality
and reliability. The appliance includes everything needed for effortless site
recovery: backed-up VM data, site recovery software, and reliable hardware. By
simply moving the appliance to a secondary location, companies can
exponentially improve their site recovery preparedness.
While designing the Site Recovery feature we drew
inspiration from the best practices in the industry, while preserving and
integrating all our core data protection functionality. NAKIVO Backup &
Replication has just entered a new market - the market of dedicated site
recovery solutions - and the product is disrupting it. We are still young.
We're planning even more features that should further improve the SR experience
down the pipeline, but we are already one step ahead of the competition.
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