May 30, 2018 by Siobhan Climer
We’ve written before about disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), and in those conversations Zerto often is front and center. In fact, we recently published this case study in which Zerto was deployed as a disaster recovery and replication solution for a Chicago-area school district.
We wanted to go a little deeper into the architecture of this virtualization software tool that makes disaster recovery as a service a decision you can be confident in. Helping our clients make informed decisions is part of why we do business. Mindsight can provide the maintenance and testing for your DRaaS, so you can rest easy knowing the right backup will be ready when disaster strikes.
From Hypervisor-Based Replication to Automated Multi-Cloud Solutions
Back in 2011, Zerto released its award-winning hypervisor-based replication disaster recovery solution to the market. Zerto’s innovation lay in moving the replication of mission-critical objectives to the hypervisor, enabling Zerto to be fully virtually-aware and provide quick recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs). Zerto went on to win multiple awards, continuing to improve and innovate its signature offering over the next several years.
Today, Zerto is in the spotlight again. Improving on its classic virtual replication software, 2018 brings with it the release of Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0, a fully automated multi-cloud solution for data protection, disaster recovery, and multi-cloud technology.
What’s New in Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0?
If you already use Zerto, you know its journal-based recovery and tight RPO set it apart from other products. So, what has Zerto added in the VR 6.0 launch?
The big focus is on:
- multi-cloud resilience
- journal recovery improvements
- rehydration optimization (now you can pull file and folders from the journal without having to rehydrate)
- scalability
- analytics
Zerto is also cloud agnostic, and enables users to switch seamlessly to, from, and between Azure, AWS, IBM, and other cloud providers.
What Is An “IT Resilience Platform”?
Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 is being billed as the “industry’s first IT resilience platform”. But what does that mean?
Let’s begin by looking at what the Zerto platform claims it can do.
- Continuous Replication
- Workload Mobility
- Multi-cloud Agility
Continuous Availability, Workload Mobility, And Multi-Cloud Agility
The core of a successful IT experience is the agility that comes with continuous replication and recovery. You may need to recover data for many reasons. Perhaps a user deleted a table or a developer created a logical corruption.
Whatever the reason, instead of using snapshots to replicate data, Zerto opts for journal-based recovery. You can rewind a proactive change, or undo an accidental one. The big difference between Zerto and other disaster recovery products is the recovery point objective – the RPO. How much data loss can your business tolerate between data backups?
Zerto’s RPO can be mere seconds.
Not everyone needs the continuous availability offered by Zerto, but it is the single difference that can make it the right solution for businesses with mission-critical applications that require a tight RPO.
Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 is also automated. Combined with its continuous replication, this enables IT teams to conduct non-disruptive testing with no impact on production. This is key for uptime-intensive industries, like manufacturing and healthcare.
Workload mobility allows migrations and consolidation without risk, and multi-cloud agility means businesses can leverage the cloud for growth. In addition, Zerto has added additional analytic tools that leverage these benefits. Users can optimize and plan across multiple sites and multiple clouds.
Multi-Cloud Agility Adjusts To Your Business Needs
Caroline Seymour, Zerto’s Director of Product Marketing, describes multi-cloud as the moving of apps and data workloads to the cloud, from the cloud, back to on-premise, or to a different cloud. “What we’re talking about is the ability to move to, from, and between multiple clouds.” Since the platform is fully automated, it should be able to seamlessly assist in data protection and disaster recovery for all kinds of disruptions.
The word disruption conjures up deleted files, natural disasters, large infrastructure failures, and security leaks or ransomware attacks. These are unplanned disruptions.
But Zerto includes good disruptions – those that help your business grow – like mergers, acquisitions, cloud migrations, datacenter consolidations, maintenance and upgrades. Resilience means you can adapt and move through any type of disruption, confident your data is safe and secure.
Disaster Recovery As A Service (DRaaS)
The biggest concerns enterprises have in moving to the cloud are availability, performance, and security of mission-critical data. The cloud is still considered an emerging technology, especially in areas like healthcare and finance. How can businesses feel confident in the decision to employ a disaster recovery solution like Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0?
DRaaS enables businesses to dip their toes into disaster recovery in the cloud. By replicating application processes to the cloud, organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of Zerto and a cloud-based disaster recovery plan without bringing on additional risk.
Mindsight offers DRaaS as a way to help bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. For many, that means a hybrid cloud solution, where the mission-critical data or the data for which security is the primary concern, is stored on-premise. Other, less critical applications, are stored on the cloud. This enables users to test the cloud solution in a risk-free environment.
DRaaS is a huge cost savings. Instead of enormous capital expenditures, the cloud enables monthly billing based on use. Here are some of cloud solutions Mindsight offers through Zerto:
- Multi-site
- Multi-tenant
- Array agnostic
- Timely deployment
- Validation and testing
- Granular
- Comprehensive
- Consistent and Reliable
What’s Missing
The answer is not much. Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0 is an affordable Lamborghini in the disaster recovery virtualization software world. It’s the best-in-class enterprise solution, and the keys are in your hands.
But even the best disaster recovery solution only works with the right disaster recovery plan. The Mindsight team can develop, maintain, and execute your disaster recovery plan.
Contact us today to plan a disaster recovery roadmap for tomorrow.
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About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We have one of the largest expert-level engineering teams delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from cloud to infrastructure, collaboration to contact center. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for an emerging business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.
Contact us at GoMindsight.com.
About The Author
Siobhan Climer, Science and Technology Writer for Mindsight, writes about technology trends in education, healthcare, and business. She previously taught STEM programs in elementary classrooms and museums, and writes extensively about cybersecurity, disaster recovery, cloud services, backups, data storage, network infrastructure, and the contact center. When she’s not writing tech, she’s writing fantasy, gardening, and exploring the world with her twin two-year old daughters. Find her on twitter @techtalksio.
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