VMware Live Recovery Reviews

We use VMware Live Recovery for creating new hosts and new servers. We synchronize all of our software from our data center to our co-location in real time, so when a disaster happens, we switch to the co-location.

The functionality of the features is helpful for us. We find the resource scalability quite good, and we can increase resources easily. We are comfortable with the solution, and it has proven to be beneficial for enterprise solutions. We fit well with this solution.

In our organization, we have deployed VMware Live Recovery for disaster recovery purposes. We have two data centers, and VMware Live Recovery is used for data replication between these centers. It is used to ensure data availability and for migration purposes when the primary data center is down.

VMware Live Recovery is simple and understandable within the VMware environment, especially when integrated with vCenter and ESXi hosts. It is used for data replication between data centers and allows for quick response in times of failure, ensuring data availability. This solution helps with efficient data migration.

In my total career spanning 20 years, I've focused on business continuity, specifically in disaster recovery.

The solution offers a rich set of features, well adapted in the market. There are many solutions available around this area. The community provides good knowledge, so I can get answers if I have special inquiries. It saves resources in general, allowing for fewer managers. The solution includes several automations.

As a managed service provider with VMware, we offer virtual desktops to our customers. We support around 80+ customers, some use VMware, some use Hyper-V... it varies. In total, we support around one million virtual desktops. 

My role as an enterprise architect is to provide solutions to these diverse customers.

From a VMware perspective, we use SRM, or Site Recovery Manager, for disaster recovery. SRM has an automated recovery process, which reduces the need for manual intervention during a disaster. This minimizes downtime and ensures faster recovery times.

The automation of failover and failback processes. is key. During a disaster or planned migration, SRM automates the failover process to the recovery site. It coordinates the shutdown of virtual machines on the protected site and powers on corresponding VMs on the recovery side.

This automation is crucial because it may involve hundreds of VMs that can't fail over all at once. SRM follows a specific procedure, ensuring that virtual machines are recovered in the correct order according to a predefined recovery plan. This minimizes downtime and ensures complete recovery.

Additionally, after a disaster or migration event has been resolved, SRM automates the failback process. This allows you to return virtual machines and data to the original production site.

We use the solution primarily for off-site disaster recovery. A site act as the headquarters, and there is also DR site. This means that we move application data from primary to secondary sites for storage level replication purposes. We also back up our virtual machines and their applications to the DR site. Essentially, we do disaster recovery from the primary site to the DR sites.

Before using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, we were running on a batch storage solution backup, which was conducted by one of my team members. However, prior to carrying out the copying, he backed up the application to local storage before copying it to the tape drive. This means that the storage controller must be up before copying was made to the tape drive, which clearly precluded the possibility of us restoring the backup. There was nothing we could do when this happened. Now, subsequent to the installation and implementation of the VMware Cloud Solution, there is no need for us to rely solely on a single storage controller. This makes things easy for us once the storage level application replicates our data to the DR site. This means that even if the entire primary site goes down, we can still fall back on the data and the application that is available on the DR site. This allows us to consistently maintain the state of our application and business data.

I have mostly worked with VMware SRM, which is a solution tightly integrated with the product.

The most valuable feature of VMware SRM is its integration with the VMware platform.

Our company's clients use VMware SRM for disaster recovery. 

Each OEM has varying USPs or different architectures. Some competitor solutions offer faster backup processes than VMware SRM. A native hypervisor feature is found in certain other solutions, but VMware offers it through a separate license from VMware SRM. 

We typically use it for disaster recovery testing. It automates the process of failing over from a protected site to a recovery site, helping us achieve our RTO (Recovery Time Objective).

It has simplified data center application and failover processes, but the underlying technologies can be challenging. 

If we're using replication appliances, configuring them to work with SRM can be complex. Additionally, bandwidth and VM size can impact performance.

I would rate the ease of setting up and configuring my recovery plan in VMware SRM, a ten out of ten, with ten being the easiest.