Migrating to Windows Azure IaaS with Double-Take MOVE

MS Gold Partner Logo 2013 Windows Azure Logo 2013The question of migrating server workloads to cloud-based IaaS infrastructure is not “Why?” but instead “When and how?”  The “When?” can be anytime with the recent availability of the Windows Azure IaaS platform.  The “How?” is a choice from a number of software and service-based solutions.  Below I will cover some key questions that you need to answer before migrating to Azure and explain Vision Solutions’ Double-Take MOVE solution for migrating into Azure.

How much bandwidth will be required to migrate my server workload to Azure?  -  Your server workload may be small and manageable or large and unwieldy.  Can you make the best use of your available bandwidth to migrate the server workload in a reasonable time?  Does the migration solution you plan to use make use of bandwidth optimization to make the migration faster and more efficient?

How much downtime is acceptable during the migration?  -  Your server workload may be non-critical, super-critical, or somewhere in-between.  How many minutes or even hours of downtime are going to be incurred with your migration solution of choice?  How can you mitigate loss of productivity and revenue by making sure that not only is your downtime within SLAs but that it also causes the minimum disruption of key applications and services.

Can you migrate your server workloads intact? – Your server workload is an integral part of your business and you can’t afford to have it change when you migrate it to IaaS.  Does the solution intelligently migrate the whole server, including applications, data and system state so that you mitigate the risk of losing key server configuration details?

Double-Take MOVE from Vision Solutions, Inc. is a migration solution that mitigates risk and provides near-zero downtime between physical, virtual, and cloud IaaS platforms.  Double-Take MOVE can migrate server workloads from physical or virtual platforms to Windows Azure IaaS using patented real-time replication to make migration cutover as efficient as possible.  Applications, data, and system state are migrated in real-time while the original server is still live in production.  At cutover, the production server is shut down and the migration replica server in Azure is rebooted and brought online as an identical copy of the original server with the exception of unique network settings for the Azure virtual network.

With Double-Take MOVE, not only is data efficiently moved over the network using real-time, byte-level replication, but network traffic is also optimized using compression and bandwidth scheduling.  It doesn’t matter whether the source server is a physical server or a VM. Double-Take MOVE can migrate that workload with the same real-time efficiency and minimal downtime to Windows Azure.

You have choices when it comes to migrating server workloads to Windows Azure IaaS. If you want a simple, proven, flexible solution that can deliver minimum downtime, risk-mitigation and efficient data transfer to make your migration project a success, you need Vision Solutions’ Double-Take MOVE.

May 14, 2013 – 4:03 pm Categories: Azure, Double-Take, Double-Take Move, Microsoft, Migration, Real-Time Replication | Post a comment

MIMIX DR Now Available to Provide Disaster Recovery for SMB IBM i Shops

by Robert Gast

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Vision’s latest offering for the IBM i marketplace—MIMIX DR—was made available for the first time today. It is the most comprehensive entry-level disaster recovery solution tailored for the needs of small to medium sized businesses. Real-time replication to a backup system residing on-premises, off-site or in the Cloud ensures that mission critical data and applications are protected up to the point of failure and are always fully recoverable.

Real-time replication to a waiting backup eliminates the need for a recovery process when a disaster occurs. You simply failover and go. It also meets the widest range of regulatory mandates and services level agreements by guarding against data loss. When delivered in a cloud hosted environment, MIMIX DR is perfect for organizations that want real-time disaster recovery protection, but without having to make the capital investment in a second system.

“Businesses can find themselves exposed to risk should a problem occur between tape backups,” said Bob Morici, Director of Technical Sales for Baseline, a strategic partner to Vision Solutions. “For those SMBs, the loss of even a couple of hours’ worth of data can be difficult to overcome. And if they can’t get the business quickly back up and running, the result can be catastrophic. MIMIX DR creates a safety net that captures the transactions between periodic backups so there is no data loss, and helps them get their businesses back online rapidly.”

MIMIX DR builds on the more than 20-year heritage established by Vision Solutions’ MIMIX Availability, a product synonymous with high availability that scales from small businesses to large enterprises. MIMIX DR offers high-quality, reliable protection at a price aligned with SMB budgets. Features include:

  • Easy, browser-based user interface
  • Comprehensive protection of data and applications up to the point of failure using continuous, real-time replication
  • Robust auditing of replicated data to ensure data and applications are fully recoverable
  • Ability to failover to the complete, waiting replica without lengthy restore processes
  • Flexible configuration for protection on-site, off-site or in the cloud.

Small and medium businesses running a mission-critical application on IBM i will benefit from MIMIX DR, regardless of their industry. In addition to traditional licensing, MIMIX DR is available as a cloud-hosted or managed services offering through Vision’s global network of partners. MIMIX DR-as-a Service is ideal for businesses without a second disaster recovery system, or for those who lack access to a site which is geographically distant for protection from site outage or natural disaster.

“Many SMBs don’t realize how vulnerable they are to data loss during the business day,” said Alan Arnold, Chief Technology Officer, Vision Solutions. “This is especially true if their business day is now 24×7. Backup and recovery systems that met their needs when they were starting out may not be sufficient to keep up with their growth. We designed MIMIX DR to help them close the gaps in their data protection and meet increasingly more stringent regulations without making major capital expenditures. With everything going on in the world today, MIMIX DR is a very smart investment.”

The takeaway?  If you need take your disaster recovery strategy to a level higher than tape, and you want to do it without making a significant investment, read more about MIMIX DR.

You can also speak to peers and our experts in our IBM i information exchange open forum.

May 7, 2013 – 8:47 pm Categories: Cloud, Data Backup, Data Recovery, Disaster Recovery, IBM i, MIMIX, Real-Time Replication | Post a comment

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Watch for a New Affordable DR Solution for the IBM i Arriving on May 7

By Robert Gast

I’m not carping about small businesses here; nearly everyone in my family ran a small business at one time or another. I’m simply bringing to light a fact that you may already realize:  SMBs are typically less prepared to deal with a computer failure than large corporations. According to a Garter report, SMB management is not typically focused on what might be viewed as “hypothetical disaster scenarios.”

As for why this is true, despite increasing numbers of natural disasters making the news, it’s anyone’s guess.  Maybe they’ve been lucky, or maybe the importance of a recovery protocol never floated to the top of their to-do list.  After all, the people who run small to mid-sized businesses usually have a lot on their plate.

One thing is for sure, the stakes are a lot higher than they were even just a few years ago. At one time, small to mid-sized businesses used computers for accounting and word processing. Today, their entire application suites are integrated and handle every essential facet of business.

Not only have the risks changed, the culture of doing business has also changed. New factors that increase the impact of lost data include the exponential growth of critical data generated every day, customer expectations that services resume rapidly after a business disruption and the increasing need to access data around the clock.

Today’s data protection challenges pose substantial risks. Yet, SMBs often feel they don’t have the ability to allocate staff and financial resources to solid disaster recovery protection; all they think they can sustain is tape. Let’s face it; while magnetic tape allows you to store large volumes of information at relatively low cost, it does have shortcomings, particularly in light of today’s requirements for data access. Those who rely on magnetic tape for disaster recovery often spend hours or sometimes days preparing for recovery – retrieving tapes from the vault and obtaining a server on which to restore the data.  Another shortcoming with tape  backup is that you can only restore data to the point of the last good backup, which was most likely the night before; any data created since the last good backup will be lost. If the most recent backup was incomplete or corrupted, then you’re forced to use the next most recent backup and lose even more data.

On May 7, Vision Solutions will introduce a new entry-level disaster recovery solution specifically designed for SMBs. This new solution ensures that your business critical data and applications are protected in real-time and are fully recoverable. The new solution eliminates data loss and provides faster, more reliable and more convenient disaster recovery than tape backup. It is also very cost effective.  Please watch this space; the Vision Solutions website, and IBM i trade publications and newsletters for more information.

May 1, 2013 – 1:17 pm Categories: Disaster Recovery, IBM i, MIMIX, SMB | Post a comment

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Webcast: Explore MIMIX DR!

MIMIX DR Webcasat

April 25, 2013 – 3:09 pm Categories: Data Recovery, IBM i, MIMIX, nateral disater, webcast | Post a comment

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April 24th Webcast: Agent and Agentless Solutions

April 24 Webcast

April 16, 2013 – 4:22 pm Categories: Virtualization, webcast | Post a comment

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Live SMB Webcast Series. Register for One or All!

SMB Webcast Series for WP

March 14, 2013 – 5:02 pm Categories: webcast | Post a comment

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Double-Take Share 5.1: Get a Grip on Your Data

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Studies show that data volumes are doubling every six to 18 months. As those volumes grow, so does the pace of information consumption– the moment when changed data must be useful and usable for the business. These converging forces put IT data integration in the crosshairs.

While data warehousing and data mining applications encourage more data storage for longer periods of time, analytical insight offered by such implementations far outweighs their cost. In addition, web applications, email, clickstream and multi-media data lead to increased data sharing challenges. Managers at all levels of the business are relying on real-time dashboards to run their areas, manage their budgets, determine the future and run actual day to day operations.

In response, IT teams are expected to deliver consistent, quality data that creates a single view across the business. But with data resident in multiple databases, how do you achieve this objective? For example, your organization may be using all of the following popular databases: Oracle, DB2, SQL Server and Informix. And, if you’re like many businesses, there are even more databases pumping information to and from applications.

In short, many organizations are faced with three data availability issues.

1. Complexity—more applications, non-traditional data and non-traditional formats. For example, digital video, IM, wireless, contextual information from emails and other sources, RFID feeds, the list goes on.

2. Volume—more data in an ever wider variety of formats. Studies indicate that this trend will get worse not better.

3. Latency—the single biggest impediment to real-time or near real-time operational data and decision making.

Software-Based Data Sharing that is based on real-time replication is a viable solution to these challenges.

On-demand enterprise-wide data sharing with a software-based replication solution fits your needs if you want to quickly solve pressing and ongoing data integration issues between critical applications like Oracle/PeopleSoft, Siebel, SAP, ERP, web and CRM applications. For example, you may need to integrate disparate databases and applications but cannot afford to consolidate them or embark on an expensive application integration project.

Such solutions make data available wherever and whenever it is needed — from and between Oracle, SQL, DB2, Sybase and other databases simultaneously (and back again if needed). They can solve integration problems between database or application silos that result from recent acquisitions or mergers. They can transform data into usable business information regardless of where it currently resides and which application needs it.

Software-based data sharing/replication solutions can work well in your environment if you want to spend a minimum amount of time setting up and managing the data sharing processes. These tools save time and money because their GUI console provides simple, model-based configuration, monitoring and control with no programming required.

Put Your Data to Work with Double-Take Share

  • Double-Take Share provides easy, on-demand data sharing among databases in real-time.
  • Double-Take Share breaks through the IT and organizational barriers imposed by multiple databases, incompatible applications and disparate platforms.
  • Double-Take Share makes it easy to capture, replicate, transform, enhance and share information, allowing customers to achieve greater productivity, higher profitability and immediate ROI, with no programming, and without downsides, complexities and complications commonly associated with traditional ETL tools.
  • Double-Take Share supports database management systems most commonly used in today’s datacenters running on most major operating systems, in either homogeneous or heterogeneous solution architectures.
  • With its robust replication capabilities that automatically resolve transaction-level conflicts, Double-Take Share ensures that data integrity is continuously maintained, giving the business user peace of mind that their data is consistently ready for organizational decision making.
  • While replicating the data in real-time, Double-Take Share can provide an audit trail of data access and change history, satisfying the service level agreements of environments with stringent regulatory requirements.

Release 5.1 Just Unveiled

The latest update to Double-Take Share offers enhanced MS SQL Server support, including the introduction of support for MS SQL Server 2012, performance and overhead improvements for IBM i, and enhanced support for TeraData and z/OS. Get more information on Double-Take Share and enhancements made in version 5.1!

March 12, 2013 – 1:02 pm Categories: Data Backup, Data Recovery, Double-Take Share, Migration | Post a comment

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Version 5.1 of Double-Take Share Unveiled

DT shareLatest Version of Double-Take Share Delivers Support for Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 and Performance Enhancements for IBM i and Teradata

These days, organizations must do everything correctly to retain existing customers and win new business. Yet many of them, regardless of size, are held back by a data nightmare – multiple databases, incompatible applications and mismatched platforms – all of which lead to decreased productivity. Double-Take Share 5.1 enables organizations to break through the barriers that lock data in hardware, operating systems, database or application platforms, with a simple, automated tool that enables real-time data sharing between databases, ultimately leading to increased productivity and profitability.

Version 5.1 of Double-Take Share includes many key new features that make it a great choice for existing customers, as well as companies who have not yet realized its value.

Enhancements for Microsoft SQL Server environments provide support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 as both a source and target database, enabling users to move data to or from Microsoft’s flagship database management system. Replication of XML data is provided in homogeneous Microsoft SQL Server environments, even between different versions of SQL Server, and support for multiple metabases in SQL Server environments provides additional flexibility for organizations employing multiple data models.

Enhancements for IBM i provide higher performance, allowing more transactions to be replicated with lower system resource utilization. Support has also been added for *MAXOPT3 receiver size option for IBM i customers to lower their maintenance and operational overhead by allowing the receiver to be the reset less frequently.

Additional performance and platform support enhancements have been made to yield better replication performance in Teradata environments as well as support for IBM z/OS 1.12 and z/OS 1.13.

Double-Take Share 5.1 is part of Vision’s Migration and Cross-Platform Data Sharing solution family.

Your ROI is almost immediate with Double-Take Share because its table-based GUI comes with more than 60 prebuilt transformations and requires no programming, which significantly reduces administrative time and improves productivity.

Double-Take Share is an essential tool for nearly every datacenter.

March 5, 2013 – 1:43 pm Categories: Data Backup, Data Recovery, Double-Take, Double-Take Share, High Avaialibity, IBM i, Microsoft, Migration | Post a comment

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Double-Take Move Demo: VMware to Azure

February 27, 2013 – 11:40 pm Categories: Data Backup, Demo, Double-Take, Double-Take Move, High Avaialibity, Microsoft, Video, VMware | Post a comment

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March 7 Wecast: Why Most Database Sharing Projects Fail and How to Make Sure it Doesn’t Happen to You

3 7 share webcast

February 26, 2013 – 9:19 pm Categories: Double-Take, webcast | Post a comment

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