Financial software specialist SunGard is pushing to expand the on-demand computing ecosphere with the launch of its Replication-as-a-Service business continuity solution. Replication-as-a-Service (RaaS) is logically defined as an on-demand way to replicate vital data contained within an organization's range of storage devices.
SunGard says its RaaS offering replicates data in a secure private cloud environment, which is linked into the company's own recovery network. With claims of savings at around 33 percent for secure data replication compared to traditional in-house storage and replication processes, SunGuard is betting on its one device (or service in this case) and one vendor approach to attract interest.
"Because RaaS is delivered as a service, organizations can provision replication on a 'pay-as-you-grow' basis, meaning minimal capital expenditure and the ability to scale up or down as an organization's need changes. SunGard provides the technology and specialist skills to carry out replication across multiple vendor storage devices, so that organizations need not replace their existing Storage Area Networks (SANs) or pay for additional hardware and maintenance," says the company.
By taking a snapshot of customer data at the time of an unplanned outage (or even a planned one), SunGuard contends that RaaS can help enable the quick recovery of all replicated data.
"Data protection and the recovery of information both demand operational processes that work well and do not interfere with day-to-day business. The use of sophisticated solutions such as data replication and continuous data protection (CDP) are growing, but IT professionals are looking for examples of best practice to adopt. Managed services based on tested processes will be of interest to many organizations," said Tony Lock, an analyst for Freeform Dynamics
The service starts with the installation of a replication core at the customer's site, which is linked to another replication core at a secure SunGard facility, where the data is then replicated within the SunGard SAN private cloud environment. Asynchronous replication takes place 24/7 and is completely managed by SunGard SunGard Availability Services personnel.
At time of disaster recovery, a snapshot of the customer data is taken which is then fed into the SunGard recovery network where it is connected to the recovery servers. Once this goes live, data can still be backed up using the customer's backup solution. Replication can then be maintained by making the SunGard site the primary data store and the customer site the failover store. Once a stable environment has been created at the customer site, servers can be restored back as groups or individually, reducing any disruption and maintaining replication throughout the recovery process.
