Today Zerto released Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) 3.5. Virtual Replication does per VM replication and recovery orchestration and is targeted at enterprises and service providers using VMware vSphere. Especially in the US a growing number of service providers use Zerto VR to offer Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to their customers.
Zerto partners with Cisco. Cisco is using ZVR in their blueprints for service providers. Cisco customers can use these blueprints to offer DRaaS services to their customers to enhance their business model.
New major features in ZVR 3.5 are:
- Offsite backup
- VMware VSAN support
- new action APi’s
- alerts and notification enhancements
- tolerant failover
This release also includes fixes.
Virtual Replication 3.5 is available for immediate download from the Zerto portal.
A video explaining and demoing the features can be seen here.
New in ZVR 3.5 is the ability for Offsite backup. Offsite backup is basically a copy of a regular replica stored in a safe place for a longer period.
The name ‘Offsite Backup’ can be a bit confusing. The functionality can be compared to NetApp SnapVault. Bascially Offsite Backup is a vault (or backup) for replica’s. The purpose is to make sure the replica can be retrieved over a longer time window.
The regular ZVR replica has a protection of max. 5 days. Offsite backup allows to restore data of up to one year back in time. Offsite backups can be stored on SMB/CIFS shares. Storing offsite backup data in Amazon cloud storage is supported as well using a tool which presents Amazon storage a fileshare over SMB.
The offsite backup is wrapped in a so-called Zerto Backup Package. The package contains a full backup of all virtual machines part of a Zerto Virtual Protection Group. The package is portable. It does not need the exact Zerto Virtual Manager installation of version to be restored.
Mind offsite backup is not a replacement for regular backup software. It does not have deduplication, is not an archiving solution and is not able to recover single files.
Use cases for Offsite backup are:
- compliance use
- archiving of test/dev virtual machines. Think about a software company usung VM’s for development
- 3rd site for storage of backup
- cost reduction
Tolerant failover means a failover is still regarded succesfull even when some of the VMs are recovered but cannot be not turned on. Causes for a VM not being able to start could be for example an IP conflict, MAC address conflict or not enough resources in a resource pool.