This week HotLink announced the first disaster recovery and business continuity solution that leverages Amazon Web Services to protect VMware vSphere virtual machines: HotLink DR Express.
DR Express is a plug-in that extends VMware vCenter capabilities to integrate data protection and manage disaster recovery and business continuity to a remote site within Amazon Web Services.
HotLink DR Express is an economical to protect workloads that could not sustain the cost of a replica DR site, using, according to what HotLink declares, the best offerings for all public cloud providers: AWS EC2.
Matching this profitable capability, HotLink DR Express automatically uploads the initial VM to Amazon S3 along with the ongoing differentials according to the parameters configured within vCenter.
Among the highlights of HotLink DR Express:
- Extend VMware vCenter management to DR/BC operations in Amazon — Administrators have a unified management platform that extends VM administration and management to the AWS DR/BC site and allows recovery plans to be built using vCenter-compatible tools such as PowerCLI and Orchestrator.
- Automate cloud DR/BC site creation and maintenance — vCenter users can intuitively select the desired on-premise Windows or Linux VMs for protection, configure recovery point objectives (per VM), and automatically replicate the VMs in AWS with differentials synchronized as changes occur.
- Perform integrated monitoring and continuous testing — With the ability to monitor the AWS DR/BC site from vCenter, the status of all protected workloads for any restore point is readily visible. Test environments can be provisioned and validated to ensure that DR/BC recovery plans are deployed as expected and fully functional, when needed.
- Restore business operations within minutes — HotLink DR Express users can automatically restore protected VMs in any Amazon EC2 region within minutes of a failure at any VM restore point. Amazon EC2 instances are provisioned from vCenter as easily as existing on-premise virtual machines.
- Migrate back on-premise — Administrators can restore on-premise operations, whether to the current state of AWS VMs or the original restore point, when the local infrastructure is available.
Lynn LeBlanc, CEO and founder of HotLink declared:
HotLink DR Express makes disaster recovery and business continuity accessible by any organization and for every workload by opening up AWS for VMware recovery. Most importantly, HotLink fully integrates this capability into the existing management environment of VMware vCenter, so business continues as usual if a failure happens. By combining Amazon economics with HotLink’s unique transformation technology, HotLink DR Express is a win for any VMware shop, large or small.