Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : VPS-mirroring for DR

[vintagecar]

I have multiple SQL servers, a couple of Exchange boxes and a few oracle machines in an environment, I'm wondering what the best way and most flexible way to mirror this environment to an offsite location for DR purposes. Is VPS the route to go? Is there mirroring software that would replicate changes between the primary site and the DR site? Is there a better way to approach these needs not using VPS? Any websites that could be provided for more knowledge or solutions would be helpful!

[rghf]

The following is thinking off top of my head so no guarentees I'm talking any sence and its untested

There are a number of physical to virtual (google for p2v) migration tools which could take a snapshot of your server and make it into a virtual image. If you had your own VPS node then you could create the images as needed and in the case of failure boot them. Of course it wouldn't be real time but you could probably work around that somehow. Also p2v tools *may* cause downtime on the main systems. Again YMMV.

Top hits in google that seem to be helpful

http://www.platespin.com/
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATIESWin/universal-restore.html?source=googleAUR&keyword=p2v&s_scid=p2v|696326537&gclid=CIDc4_zn_IcCFURBEgodiB-3Hg

Rus

[vintagecar]

What about VMWARE...I've done some reading on it and it looks like a good product. VMWARE ESX server...

[rghf]

There is a P2V tool for that and it would work quite nicely on some high end hardware (or multiple servers). If you were being really fancy you could try converting your existing infrastucture to VPS machines and the migrate of copy of them off every night though that might be overkill

[EuroVPS/Director]

I wouldn't advise running heavy SQL or Exchange in any type of VPS whether ESX or VZ etc. If you need to have the whole lot failed over in some other location I think your architecture needs a revamp. It's not easy to just failover Exchange and SQL servers in some other location as you're talking about so many factors it would become a nightmare.

Maybe images would be possible but you'd still be hours back in case of some failure. Acronis works very well for all of the aforementioned servers exchange included.

Best plan is simply using Acronis and sending the images to tape, what is the primary fear here, h/w failure, equipment theft? In order to give the best advice it's required that you tell us what you're trying to protect these servers from,

[vintagecar]

protection from a disaster stand point mainly. For a company that needs a continued uptime, downtime must be at a bare minimum. Charges apply per minute from certain customers for downtime and they are expensive charges. So mirroring the current environment is critical.

[zynfella]

With regards to DR solutions, aiming for the "best and most flexible way" depends on your SLA, budget and the kind of sophiscation you want to have.

We have great success in implementing DR solutions using EMC technologies/products such as DMX and BCV. This solution however is on the high-end of the DR spectrum. If budget is not really much of a hassle for you, their solutions will pretty much cover your requirements.

If you are also looking for backup and recovery solutions, we use Legato, also now an EMC product.

In case you wanna know, we have it implemented on Solaris, Sybase, Oracle platforms. Next target will be our windows 2003 and SQL 2000 servers.


Good luck with your search.