Datrium today introduced a disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) using the VMware Cloud on AWS as the remote DR data centre.
The service is imaginatively called “Datrium DRaaS with VMware Cloud on AWS” and the hybrid converged system supplier said it is much simpler for customers than running their own remote data centre. There is a consistent management environment and Datrium handles all ordering, billing and support. It claims its DRaaS is up to 10 times less expensive that a traditional DR operation, but has not yet provided an example.
Datrium organised a fun quote from Steve Duplessie, senior analyst at ESG: “Let’s face it – DR has been more disaster than recovery. It has been virtually impossible to have legitimate DR for decades, and the problem just keeps getting worse with exponential data growth and overall complexity.”
And here’s another from Bryan Betts, Principal Analyst, Freeform Dynamics. “Cloud-based disaster recovery has been something of a Holy Grail—great in theory, but a lot harder to achieve in practice, thanks to the complexity of marrying up disparate environments,” he said. “Datrium DRaaS has the potential to completely flip that around – given testing and careful planning, of course! – by guaranteeing a matching DR setup in the cloud.”
Datrium DRaaS, the features
Datrium copies on-premises virtual machine (VM) data to the AWS cloud. Should disaster strike it can then start up a replacement cloud version of the on-premises DVX systems.
Data upload takes place with deduplicated and compressed VM snapshots stored in AWS S3. These VMs are stored in native vSphere format and provide the basis for incremental backup and DR.
Datrium’s DRaaS offers a 30-minute recovery compliance objective (RCO) with autonomous compliance checks and just-in-time creation of VMware SDDCs from the S3-stored snapshots.
The service also delivers a recovery point objective (RPO) from five minutes to multiple years ago, supporting primary and backup data simultaneously.
Single glass of pane
Datrium’s DRaaS runs on the company’s Automatrix data platform, which converges primary storage, backup, disaster recovery, encryption and data mobility capabilities into a single offering with a consistent data plane.
DR operation can be tested in an isolated and non-disruptive way. There is a consistent management environment covering the on-premises and cloud-resident Datrium systems. Customers can operate their cloud DR site and primary site with vSphere
FailBack is automated and can recover VMs when the primary site is operational again or to recover from a ransomware attack. To minimise egress charges only changed data is sent back from the cloud.
Datrium DRaaS currently supports recovery to AWS regions including Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (London) and the East and West United States. Contact Datrium for pricing.
Competition
Druva also offers DRaaS based on AWS. On-premises VMs or ones in the VMware Cloud on AWS are backed up to Druva’s cloud in AWS, converted to EBS snapshots, and can be spun up as EC2 instances if disaster strikes the source site.
Zerto sells combined backup and DR facilities covering any-to-any mobility between vSphere, Hyper-V, AWS, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and any of several hundred Zerto-powered Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).
