EMC replication manager s/w for VMware

HOPKINTON, MASS, USA: EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure solutions, announced that its EMC(R) replication manager software now features new data protection functionality for VMware(R) infrastructure that provides customers with more effective information protection and business continuity of virtual environments.

As more servers and applications are deployed in virtualised environments, EMC will continue providing the broadest range of data protection solutions for all pillars of VMware recovery.

Replication manager automates the management of EMC array based replicas, accelerating backups, enabling more complete reporting and saving time, staff and computing resources. By automating the management processes, replicas can be created in the context of the application, with parallel access to production data for backup acceleration, reporting, and testing -- with little to no impact to production.

With the latest version of replication manager, management of copies and complete recovery of both physical and virtual environments is handled through a single console. Now, the EMC data protection software provides integrated array replicas at the VMware virtual machine level and integrates with VMware ESX Servers and Virtual Center APIs to ensure virtual machine consistency.

This streamlines virtual machine file system (VMFS) replica management by providing near-instant, virtual machine consistent backup and recovery of VMFS delivered via EMC's array based snapshot and clone technology.

This new functionality can be used for direct integration with VMware VMFS providing instant VMFS level backup and virtual machine level restore. Automating and scheduling VMFS replicas has become much easier through intuitive easy-to-use wizards and a point-and-click user interface.

Customers can leverage replicas created by replication manager for a single virtual machine level restore through VMware's VirtualCenter management software.

Pulte Homes, one the largest US home building companies with operations in 26 states, utilises replication manager in its environment. Chris Faria, system engineer, Pulte Homes, said: "One of the greatest challenges in keeping the operations of our data centre running smoothly is meeting our backup and deployment windows. By leveraging EMC replication manager for our most critical applications, we've been able to reduce our deployment windows by more than 50 percent, enabling us to better service our field operations."

"The expanded support for VMware Virtual Infrastructure will enable us to reduce our physical footprint in the data centre by creating virtual replicas of application data that react just like ones previously in physical environments. In addition, we'll be able to route non-production applications into a virtual environment so those production environments in the data centre can run at peak performance. We expect Replication Manager's new support will help us extend the life of our data centre, lower power and cooling costs and increase productivity," Faria added.

In addition to existing support for EMC's array-based replication software, EMC  TimeFinder, EMC SnapSure and EMC SnapView, the latest version of replication manager also includes additional application support, such as:

- Already supported in physical environments, new application level support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g/11g instances that are running on VMFS in a VMware ESX Server 3.5 Windows 2003 guest operating system environment.

- Expanded support for EMC's network-based replication solution, EMC RecoverPoint enabling management in Microsoft Windows 2003 environments with the ability to manage application consistent RecoverPoint continuous remote replication (CRR) and concurrent local and remote (CLR) replicas for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and Oracle 10g/11g on EMC CLARiiON and EMC Symmetrix networked storage systems.