In this episode, Chris and Martin catch up with the Datrium team to discuss CloudShift, Datrium’s new SaaS DR offering.  CloudShift provides the capability to use backups that have been written to Cloud DVX and fire up a VMware Cloud on AWS instance, recovering the backups into the vSphere cluster.  CloudShift can also be used to do DR between primary and secondary DVX environments.

As the conversation evolves, Chris and Martin investigate exactly how an on-premises environment is replicated to the cloud.  CloudShift requires initial configuration and then tracks virtual machines for compliance against the expected configuration.  What’s interesting is using VMC (VMware Cloud on AWS) as a DR target.  Although Datrium’s experience is that an environment can be build in around an hour, there’s no specific SLA.  This of course, could have an issue for RTO (recovery time objective).

Sazzala mentions their VMworld 2018 presentations.  Here they are:

Battle Royale: SysAdmin vs DevOps Engineer [CODE5557U] – Monday, Aug 27, 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. | Power Session Theater in the VMTN Lounge

Existing Choices to Leverage VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) for DR [VMTN5977U] – Thursday, Aug 30, 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. | VMTN Theater in the VMTN Lounge

The DR site is dead, long live DR! On-demand DR on VMware Cloud on AWS. [VMTN5618U] – Tuesday, Aug 28, 12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. | VMTN Theater in the VMTN Lounge

Automatic Failover to AWS When a Wildfire Approaches Your Data Center [HYP3720BUS] – Tuesday, Aug 28, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. | Islander C, Lower Level

Faster Home Loans on VMware vSphere Mean More Financial Services Revenue [VAP1454BU] – Tuesday, Aug 28, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Breakers J, Level 2

Elapsed Time: 00:23:07

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros

* 00:01:00 – What is CloudShift?

* 00:02:00 – Recap – what is DVX and Cloud DVX?

* 00:04:00 – CloudShift in more detail – site to site & site to cloud

* 00:06:30 – Using VMC (VMware Cloud on AWS) for operational consistency

* 00:07:24 – How does Datrium make money from this service?

* 00:09:00 – DR is about getting to the DR site – and getting back…

* 00:10:30 – Automated DR testing – scheduling regular tests

* 00:12:40 – What about RTO?  How quickly does failover work?

* 00:16:00 – How does VMC get configured to match the production site?

* 00:17:40 – Cloud DVX was SaaS, so CloudShift extends the SaaS model.

* 00:18:00 – What is next? Data lifecycle.

* 00:20:00 – SaaS – could this be the future for storage vendors?

* 00:21:00 – VMworld presentations

* 00:22:00 – Wrap Up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* #48 – Introduction to Datrium DVX (Sponsored)

* #43 – All-flash Market Review 2018 with Chris Mellor

* Garbage Collection #005 – Disaggregated Storage

* Modern Storage Architectures: Datrium

* Why Deterministic Storage Performance is Important

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