M+E Daily

Virtualized environments are playing an increasingly significant role in disaster recovery (DR) and all organizations should learn to leverage that virtualization, according to Kevin Brosnan, solutions architect at Burnaby, Canada-based software company Teradici.

“Virtualized IT environments reduce costs,” he said during the June 25 webinar “Leveraging Virtualization for Improved Availability and Disaster Recovery.”

“They also reduce the burden of physical desktop management, as well as server infrastructure, improving uptime and staff productivity and you get the flexibility of a virtual environment,” he said.

Today, many production workloads are being run on virtualized infrastructure and that enables greater flexibility, efficiency and availability, according to Teradici.

Disasters caused by human error internal to a company and external causes can all cause major interruptions to business, Brosnan said during the webinar. Internal causes can include poor communication, lack of process controls and physical accidents within a data center, while external causes may include cyberattacks, network interruptions, power outages and extreme weather events, he noted.

Citing third-party data, he said there were 282 reported natural disasters in 2018 and 71% of enterprises experienced a downtime event in the past year.

DR helps safeguard IT infrastructure and employee productivity, so it’s important to have a DR plan to: Strive for 100% business continuity; reduce downtime; guarantee quick recovery of files, applications and virtual machines; and meet service level agreements for recovery time and recovery point objectives, he said.

DR also enables an organization to diversify where and how data and applications are stored or accessed, as well as make IT infrastructure or end-user devices easier to manage through virtualization, he said, noting a mix of traditional components and virtualized IT infrastructure are used.

However, even with virtualization, backup remains the core of all DR plans, the company says, noting the use of virtualization for DR and solutions like Teradici Cloud Access Software can help an organization significantly reduce the time to recover a critical workload as well as the requirements for redundant hardware.

Teradici’s remote desktop solution enables enterprises to easily deliver Windows, Linux desktops and applications from any combination of public cloud or on-premise data center to any device, the company says. The solution was built on PCoIP technology and provides the highest user experience and security, along with complete cloud independence, according to Teradici.

With Cloud Access Software for DR, you can leverage existing hardware, so “you can save costs and time spent training staff,” Brosnan noted on the webinar, adding: “Using those physical endpoints and devices … you can then just connect to a DR target site.”

A lightweight software client can also be installed on a home PC or laptop for fast and simple connectivity, empowering employees to work from anywhere, he said.

There’s also a multi-cloud advantage as Cloud Access Software is “cloud agnostic” and supports on-prem, hybrid and cloud environments, he pointed out. When setting up a DR site, using public clouds is less expensive than on-premises recovery sites and resources are only used as needed, he noted. In addition, there’s no need to invest in physical infrastructure that may never even be used, and public clouds are also reliable, easier to set up and tend to have a “service level uptime of 99.9%,” according to Teradici.

Cloud licensing is also simple, Brosnan told listeners. With concurrent and cloud licensing, an organization can ensure the transfer of licenses from a primary site to a recovery site, according to the company. This avoids the need to deploy and maintain a license server and only as many licenses as the number of concurrent logins are required, Teradici says. There’s also “faster and more efficient provisioning,” functions including auto-detect brokering and load balancing can be leveraged, and employee desktops can also automatically be redirected in the event of a disaster, it notes.

Cloud Access Software offers best-in-class security, supports up to 4K Ultra High-Def (UHD) resolution and enables a superior user experience that allows employees to work productively and seamlessly, as if their virtual desktops were right under their desks, according to Teradici.

Remote workstations in the cloud also enable on-demand, powerful cloud workstations that may be securely accessed from anywhere, using any device, Brosnan noted on the webinar.