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Virtualization and DR

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19 views4 pages

Virtualization and DR

Virtualization and dr notes

Uploaded by

praduman05568
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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What is virtualization support and

disaster recovery?
Virtualization refers to creating virtual versions of computing resources like
servers, storage, networks, and applications. It allows you to run multiple
virtual machines on a single physical server. The virtual machines share
the resources of the physical server.

Some key benefits of virtualization include:


 Cost savings – More efficient use of server hardware resources
means lower capital and operating costs.
 Flexibility – Virtual machines can be easily provisioned, moved,
cloned and reconfigured.
 Scalability – Resources can be scaled up or down to meet changing
needs.
 Increased hardware utilization – Virtualization allows workloads to be
consolidated so more work can be done with less hardware.
Popular virtualization platforms include:

 VMware – The industry leader with over 75% market share according
to 2021 statistics. Products include vSphere, ESXi, and NSX.
 Microsoft Hyper-V – Hypervisor built into Windows. Used widely
alongside VMware.
 KVM – Open source hypervisor for Linux. Very popular for virtualizing
Linux workloads.
How Virtualization Works
Virtualization works by using software called a hypervisor to abstract the
physical hardware and resources of a single server into multiple virtual
machines (VMs). The hypervisor emulates the underlying hardware,
allowing each VM to operate as if it has its own CPU, memory, storage,
and more. Resources like CPU cycles and RAM are allocated dynamically
between VMs to optimize utilization.

The hypervisor manages all the VMs and distributes resources as needed.
This allows multiple operating systems and applications to run in isolation
on the same physical server. The VMs are completely segmented and
unaware of each other, reducing security risks and compatibility issues.
The hypervisor also optimizes resource usage by allocating only the
needed CPU, memory, and storage to each VM
Overall, virtualization provides flexibility, security, and efficient utilization of
computing resources by abstracting and partitioning hardware into multiple
virtual machines. The hypervisor software is the key technology enabling
this by emulating hardware, managing VMs, and dynamically allocating
resources.

Virtualization Support
Virtualization support refers to the ongoing services required to ensure
virtualized environments run smoothly. This typically involves tasks
like Cloud Virtualization Support Services – How Your Business Can
Benefit By Outsourcing:

 Monitoring and troubleshooting VMs


 Proactive maintenance and optimization
 Capacity planning and scaling
 Backup and recovery
Monitoring tools track the performance and availability of VMs, allowing
support staff to quickly identify and resolve any issues. They also facilitate
proactive optimization by analyzing resource utilization and making
adjustments to improve efficiency.

Capacity planning involves projecting future virtualization needs and


expanding resources accordingly. This ensures there are adequate
compute, storage, and network resources as demands grow over time.
Support teams help scale capacity by adding host servers, storage, and
other infrastructure.

Comprehensive backup and recovery protects VMs from data loss in the
event of outages or disasters. Virtualization support will implement backup
solutions and test restores to validate recoverability. They may also offer
disaster recovery services to replicate VMs offsite for redundancy.

Overall, virtualization support maximizes uptime and performance while


enabling controlled growth. It frees IT teams from day-to-day virtual
environment management so they can focus on higher-level initiatives.

Disaster Recovery for Virtualized Environments


Virtualization creates additional complexity and challenges for disaster
recovery efforts. Key aspects to address include:
Challenges of disaster recovery with virtualization[1]:

 Virtual machine mobility makes it difficult to maintain consistent


backups
 Backups like snapshots can get outdated as VMs change
 Hypervisors add another layer to account for in recovery procedures
 Network configurations may not properly map between primary and
recovery sites
Backup types like snapshots[ and continuous data replication play an
important role in minimizing data loss and recovery time objectives.
However, virtual machine backups require careful coordination.

Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) help
set disaster recovery goals and service level targets. But the dynamic
nature of virtual environments makes consistently meeting these targets
difficult.

Effective disaster recovery for virtualized infrastructure requires extensive


orchestration and automation of backup processes, replication, failover
testing, and network reconfiguration.

Disaster Recovery Strategies


There are several key strategies for enabling disaster recovery in
virtualized environments:

Backup and Restore


Backup and restore involves regularly backing up virtual machine data and
configurations. In the event of a disaster, VMs can be restored from
backup (Source 1). Pros of this approach include its simplicity and low cost.
Cons are the potential for data loss since the last backup and significant
downtime to restore VMs.

Replication
Replication synchronously or asynchronously copies VM data to a
secondary site. If the primary site fails, VMs can be brought up at the
secondary site with minimal data loss and downtime. Pros are near-zero
data loss and fast recovery. Cons include higher complexity and
cost (Source 2).
High Availability and Failover Clustering
High availability utilizes clustered shared storage with VMs running on
multiple hosts. If one host fails, VMs can be restarted on other hosts.
Failover clustering extends this across sites. Pros include fast automated
failover with near-zero downtime. Cons are complexity and Cost.

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