When DRaaS was launched by VMware the backend of last year, everyone was pretty excited about the ability to ‘get rid’ off their secondary/DR site and offload it all into the cloud – A subscription based DR solution which would allow customers to decrease their Capex and offset it with an Opex model.

It kind of boils down to the old accounting argument regarding whether Capex or Opex is a better spending model for IT Infrastructure. Now I’m not an accountant, nor am I pretending to understand the ins-and-outs of tax-deductible benefits, but from my understanding an Opex model is more tax efficient – especially on the P&L balance sheet. (Obviously correct me if I’m wrong!)

Usually a Capex model means:

1. You require a large amount of cash outlay to purchase all the goods
2. You have to make an ‘educated’ guess to estimate future capacity needs
3. Once you’ve purchased the goods, you’re pretty much stuck with it, despite advancements in technology of company growth

However, some CFOs still think that Opex is more expensive as they only consider the cost of the physical server required for the applications.
Whenever you have to do any sort of capex/opex comparison, you have to take the direct costs such as power, cooling, floor space, storage and IT resources to manage the physical hardware.
Plus then there’s all the indirect costs – network and storage, procurement and accounting costs, transportation/logistics, etc. Once all these other costs that accompany the physical tin are considered, it becomes a different argument!

Anyways, I digress…..

So When VMware launched vCloud Air DR, I thought it would become a viable solution for customers looking to get rid of their DR site….. but upon closer inspection there were some flaws in the solution – namely trying to automate your DR (like SRM) and the process of failback once your primary site comes back online (the vCloud Connector process was clunky and required VMs to be powered off before a full data copy occurs back to the primary site – not a viable solution as who would switch off their VMs in order to copy them back over? And we’re talking hours offline if you’re copying a 100GB VM over a 100Mb link!!).

Quick overview of the benefits:

• RPO configured on individual VMs from 15mins to 24hrs.
• DR protection is per VM (allowing individual VMs to be failed over)
• Secure asynchronous replication of VMs (using vSphere replication)
• Self-service DR testing of VMs (up to 2 tests per 12mth period with a 7 day testing period)
• Guaranteed resource availability (especially during DR failover)
• Monitoring and management via Web Client
• Integrates seamlessly with vSphere environments
• VMs can run for up to 30 days in a failover scenario without incurring additional costs
• Ability to transition out of the DRaaS into vCloud Air Private or Dedicated Cloud
• SLA of 4hrs or less

I’m happy to say that the current release now offers Native Failback using vSphere Replication to reverse the replication from vCloud Air DR into your on-premise environment. Unlike vCloud Connector, this does not require the VMs to be powered off during the reverse replication. It can also be managed from your Web Client – similar to how you originally setup the replication process to vCloud Air.

In addition to this, VMware are now offering Multiple Point-in-Time Recovery using the ability of vSphere replication to retain multiple recovery points, up to a total of 24! Great if you need to recover to an earlier point in time if the latest replication set is corrupt or the VM experiences errors.

Finally, Automation is now possible with full integration with vRealize Orchestrator via a plug-in. This will allow you to create multiple VM recovery plans and automate the failover process – similar to what SRM can do.

For more information about the new version of vCloud Air DR, head along to VMware’s blog announcement: What’s new with vCloud Air DR?

For more information about the vCloud Air offerings, point your browsers here: vCloud Air