Need Disaster Recovery On The Cheap? Think VirtualizationNeed Disaster Recovery On The Cheap? Think Virtualization

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For organizations that aren't virtualized yet but want to use virtualization technology for DR, several vendors offer appliances that leverage virtualization and inexpensive storage to build out a cost-effective DR system. One example is PlateSpin's Forge product, which has grown in popularity as an appliance alternative to building a mirrored (or smaller version) of your production environment. The system is built on VMware's virtualization engine and leverages PlateSpin's conversion and recovery software. Replication is configured based on bandwidth and desired recovery windows. The boxes come in two sizes with the ability to support 10 or 25 servers. The $50,000 price for the 25-server edition seems steep, but not when you consider that it comes with 2.5 TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM, includes all virtualization licensing, and supports virtualized and nonvirtualized boxes. Nonvirtualized servers must be configured with PlateSpin's converter and will require some tweaking of images and settings.

A few caveats: At press time, the devices supported Windows servers only. However, given PlateSpin's recent acquisition by Novell, we expect Linux support in short order, maybe even a physical-to-virtual utility for NetWare servers. In addition, your investment doesn't buy bandwidth enhancements or speed improvements versus replication between servers, and finally, PlateSpin doesn't address all SAN storage or database replication. Zenith Infotech offers a similar appliance, built on Sun virtualization technology, with similar OS and SAN support limitations.

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Money talks, so we ran some numbers comparing the cost to set up virtualized and standard DR sites for a network with 30 servers and 4 TB of storage capacity, assuming the main production network isn't virtualized. The lion's share of savings comes from server hardware. In a standard setup, mirrored configuration of the main facility, requiring like-for-like hardware, would run $150,000. In a virtual scenario, we'd use larger servers with additional memory and processors. Target consolidation is 10-to-1 at a cost of $30,000, for a net savings of $120,000. We tallied software licensing costs at $100,000 for the standard site and $120,000 for the virtualized site, to account for core licenses plus virtualization and associated backup software. Storage capacity is a wash. We assumed standard site engineering at $40,000, then doubled that for the virtualized site to account for the additional work required to perform physical-to-virtual conversions and create an update plan. Even without the long-term utility and other savings represented by maintaining fewer physical servers, in our example scenario we find the virtual setup costs $60,000 less than the standard site.

Mike Healey is CTO of GreenPages Technology Solutions, and an information contributor. Reach him at [email protected].

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