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Virtualization Is Key to Disaster Recovery, Says VMware's Greene

Posted by James Rogers on September 12, 2007

Tags: Backup & Recovery,  Cloud Storage,  Data Protection,  Infrastructure,  Other

Channel: Backup & Recovery, Cloud Storage, Data Center, Data Protection, Other

SAN FRANCISCO -- VMworld -- Virtualization, as well as changing the landscape of the data center, is prompting users to rethink their disaster recovery strategies, according to VMware CEO Diane Greene.

"Disaster recovery has been a huge factor driving application of virtualization," she said during her keynote here today, explaining that, for many firms, disaster recovery has typically been complex to set up and almost impossible to test.

CIOs and IT managers are certainly wrestling with the demands of keeping systems up and running, and recent weather emergencies have underlined the need to establish disaster recovery sites as far as possible from their central data centers. (See Washington University Medical School, New Orleans Parish School Board, and People-Planning Critical to DR.)

The challenge for many firms is lack of hardware and disaster recovery expertise, according to Greene, who pointed to virtualization as a possible solution. Yesterday, for example, the vendor launched its Site Recovery Manager software, which aims to simplify and automate disaster recovery. (See VMware Intros Recovery Manager.)