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Microsoft Azure, one of the largest cloud computing platforms and infrastructures, was created for building, deploying and managing services and applications through a Microsoft-managed and partner hosted global network of data centers. With Azure Site Recovery storing VM snapshots in the cloud and allowing failover to them, it’s no surprise that Azure Backup is being offered as a service to Windows 10 users. And recently adding scalability to VMs, companies that require more speed and storage from their VMs will soon have innovative options using the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Of great consequence is the ability to exploit the power of Azure for disaster recovery of data centers.
In his paper, Leveraging the power of Microsoft Azure to build your (Hyper-V) datacenter Disaster Recovery Plan, Peter de Tender, Microsoft Infrastructure Expert, Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and MVP on Windows Expert IT Pro, discusses the impact of disasters on businesses, leveraging statistics from formal sources:
These dire figures make the necessity of a disaster recovery plan for every business certain.
Disaster recovery plans are put in place for natural disasters, as well as disasters caused by human and technical error. The solutions are a set of processes, policies and procedures that handle the preparation for recovery or continuation of critical technological infrastructure during and after the occurrence of disasters. Traditionally, solutions such as tape storage and redundant components have been the basis of disaster recovery plans, but today businesses don’t only want the data available after a disaster, they want full system availability, and with the advent of the cloud, VMs also have to be considered. This is where Azure Site Recovery excels.
According to de Tender, “there is always a business scenario available that can benefit from the features of Azure Site Recovery”, and using the public cloud for disaster recovery from the pure cloud perspective has the following advantages: One of the key benefits is the ability to quickly scale resources as needed without the upfront costs associated with traditional disaster recovery solutions. This flexibility allows businesses to adapt to changing demands while leveraging advanced cloud features. Additionally, the Azure free tier benefits compared to traditional infrastructure can significantly lower initial investments, making it an attractive option for organizations looking to enhance their resilience against unexpected disruptions. Moreover, businesses can implement effective azure cost management strategies to optimize their cloud spending, ensuring that they only pay for the resources they actively use. By leveraging tools provided by Azure, organizations can monitor their usage and set budgets, preventing unexpected expenses that might arise from scaling operations during a disaster recovery scenario. This proactive approach not only maximizes the efficiency of investments but also allows companies to focus on their core operations with peace of mind, knowing they have a robust disaster recovery plan in place. Furthermore, businesses can enhance their disaster recovery capabilities by integrating effective software deployment strategies in Azure. These strategies enable seamless updates and rollbacks, ensuring that applications can be restored quickly to their last known good state in the event of a failure. By adopting such practices, organizations can further strengthen their resilience and minimize downtime, ultimately contributing to a more reliable and efficient recovery process.
Azure replicates from Hyper-V Site, VMM Server, Physical Server, and VMware virtual machine, and is able to replicate to VMM Server (cloud), VMM Server with SAN, and Single VMM Server. Essentially, virtual machine system and data information is replicated from On-Premises datacenters to Azure over encrypted HTTPS port 443 traffic, and the subsequent configuration is mainly wizard-based. Virtual machines won’t run until the recovery process is initiated, and so users consume Azure storage, but only incur costs in the event of recovery operations being started. Once in failover mode, users can either initiate a fail-back scenario or leave the VMs running in Azure as the primary data center.
The market leader in business service and cloud management solutions for Microsoft System Center, Savision’s monitoring and visualizing capabilities transmute IT data into relevant, predictive, and actionable information. Though Azure Site Recovery provides extensive Azure Recovery detail, as with all specialized products, expert consultants often supply elite manipulation. Savision’s business service management solution, Live Maps Unity, provides unlimited HTML5 dashboards, and is easy to configure and use. Additionally, it integrates with other System Center components such as Operations Manager.
With headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Savision has offices in Dallas and Ottawa and provides scalable solutions for more than 700 small, medium, Government and Fortune 500 companies worldwide. For an overview of their products or an evaluation in their live demo environment, head over to their products page, or download now to test out in your own environment.
Sponsored by Savision
By Jennifer Klostermann
