Today, VMware has announced the long waited vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR 1.0. This is a thrilling news to many of our VCPP service providers partners who wanted a VMware native Cloud to Cloud DR/migration solution for vCloud Director based clouds.
Below is few highlights of the newly introduced vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR.
Simple Deployment: vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR is delivered as a single Photon-based appliance with a full GUI driven installation. During the beta phase, service providers were able to get it operational in less than an hour! This is a game changer if you compare it to the previous more complex stretched cluster solution, that required specialized hardware.
Hardware Independant: As the replication is completed in software, there is no hardware dependancy and the service provider can utilize the storage of their choice.
Self-Service: Self-service protection, failover, and failback workflows per virtual machine (VM)/vAPP is provided out of the box.
Modern Interface: Simplified and easy to use modern HTML-5 interface. Further, it offers a Single, unified portal for both tenant and service provider users.
Multi-Tenant Support: vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR 1.0 is fully multi-tenant aware which integrate very well with the strong multi-tenanacy of vCloud Director
Symmetrical replication flow that can be started from either the source or the recovery vCloud Director site.The capability of each deployment to serve as both source and recovery vCloud Director instance (site). There are no dedicated source and destination sites.
Secure and optimized replication: Secure Tunneling through TCP proxy. Built-in encryption or encryption and compression of replication traffic.
Extensive Compatibility: vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR support vCenter Server versions 6.5 U1 and 6.0 U3, and vCloud Director versions 8.20.X, 9.0.X, and 9.1. This will spare many service providers from having to upgrade their cloud stack to the latest version to offer Cloud to Cloud DR.
The architecture of the solution relies on symmetrical replication operations between cloud environments. In a single cloud environment, the vCloud Availability Replicator, the vCloud Availability Replication Manager, and the vCloud Availability vApp Replication Service/Manager operate together to support replication, secure communication, and storage of the replicated data. Each service provider can support recovery for multiple customer environments that can scale to handle increasing loads for each tenant, and for multiple tenants.
For test and development purposes, you can employ the simplest architecture where all three vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR services are deployed and configured on a single appliance. For production deployments, you deploy and configure each service on a dedicated appliance.
The components without color in the following diagram represent existing components in the vCloud Director environments. The remaining colored cells represent vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DRservices that you deploy during vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR Installation and Configuration procedures.
Please note that vCloud Availability C2C 1.0 does not replace vCloud Ability 2.0.1, but it can be run in paralel where the Service Provider desire to offer both services.
For more information on vCloud Availability C2C, refer to the release notes found at: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vCloud-Availability-for-Cloud-to-Cloud-DR/1.0/rn/VMware-vCloud-Availability-for-Cloud-to-Cloud-DR-10-Release-Notes.html
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