Dell EMC uses cloud to offer cheaper disaster recovery

Dell Technologies World Dell EMC has announced Cloud Storage Services, a disaster recovery option that removes the need for a separate storage DR site and so cuts costs. The service uses the public cloud and an MSP intermediary instead.

The service is a two-stage affair where customers replicate data to an MSP (managed service provider) facility, which has a Direct Connect link to a public cloud.

When disaster strikes at the on-premises site the compute switches to the public cloud and the stored compute instances access data on the arrays using a Direct Connect link. Claimed speed is 3msec or faster.

Cloud Storage Services supports PowerMax, Unity and Isilon on-premises arrays. The SC arrays are not supported.

Arrays without a Direct Connect link could take up to a second or more to replicate data to the public cloud, depending on network bandwidth.

Dell envisages customers will typically replicate a subset of data to the MSP site, so the arrays there would be smaller than their on-premises relatives.

This is similar to NetApp’s 2012 vintage NetApp Private Storage which “allows one to place a NetApp FAS appliance in a data centre – specifically one where Amazon’s Direct Connect is operating – from where it will be available for “immediate use via iSCSI to and from their EC2 environment.”

Cloud Storage Services supports four public cloud targets: VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS, Azure and GCP. Dell EMC said the multi-cloud approach enables compute instances in each cloud to access the MSP arrays. There is no need to move data to these clouds or to pay for storage. Users pay only for the compute in the cloud when it has to be used.

Customers running VMware environments can implement a DR system using VMware Cloud on AWS as the secondary site. VMware Site Recovery Manager, along with native replication of the Dell EMC storage arrays, enables automation of DR operations.

There is a Cloud Storage Services datasheet.

Dell EMC Cloud Storage Services is available in the US and the UK for VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.