Datrium introduces DRaaS for edge and ROBO applications

Datrium DRaaS for Edge is a new, easy to use, cost-effective SaaS solution for data protection and disaster recovery (DR) for VMware workloads in Edge environments and remote office/branch office (ROBO) implementations. With Datrium DRaaS for Edge, in the event of a ransomware attack or other disaster, enterprises can quickly recover locally or failover on demand to Datrium DRaaS with VMware Cloud on AWS with instant Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). Datrium also announced the general availability of Datrium DRaaS Connect for VMware workloads running on HCI, SAN and NAS systems. A modern approach to DR, Datrium DRaaS with VMware Cloud on AWS provides VMware users, both on premises and in the cloud, with access to reliable, cost-effective, cloud-based DR with instant RTO. Like DRaaS Connect, DRaaS for Edge is downloadable to third party on-premises systems and can be managed from a central location, simplifying the management of remote sites and making it ideal for ROBO deployments.

Research on “Ransomware and Disaster Recovery During COVID-19,” also announcedtoday, found that ransomware is plaguing the enterprise now more than ever, with 100% of respondents reporting that their company has experienced a ransomware attack in the last 12 months. The research also revealed heightened concern from businesses during the period of remote work resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic: DR is a top priority for businesses right now, with 92.1% of respondents saying it has increased in importance at their company.

The increasing importance of DR within enterprises has resulted in a 450% increase in Datrium’s DR customers during the second half of 2019 through the first half of 2020, and expanded the company’s global reach. This underscores the need for DR transformation and better data protection at a time where cyber threats like ransomware and other disasters are on the rise.

“IT organisations must deal with data spread across on-premises locations, cloud and edge locations. The challenge companies are grappling with is how to secure all that data,” said Phil Goodwin, research director at IDC. “Only about 38% of applications are protected by a disaster recovery plan; it needs to be more of a priority for businesses. The cloud has emerged as a key solution for data protection and disaster recovery. Datrium has leveraged the flexibility of the cloud to transform disaster recovery from what used to be a costly and manual process to something that’s much simpler and available on demand.”

Meeting the growing global demand for affordable and fast DR, Datrium DRaaS with VMware Cloud on AWS is a cloud-native DRaaS (disaster recovery as a service) solution offering pay-per-use cloud economics, built-in backup, instant RTO and instant compliance checks to enable DR plan efficiency when a disaster strikes.

“Business resiliency is predicated on combining rapid access to mission-critical cloud resources with rock-solid disaster recovery and IT security technology,” said Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Platform Business Unit at VMware. “By leveraging Datrium DRaaS with VMware Cloud on AWS, enterprises have a great option to effectively mitigate risk and better secure their organisations to help prevent major business disruptions.”

Built on ControlShift, Datrium’s workload orchestrator, Datrium DRaaS provides fully automated failover to VMware Cloud on AWS based on live mounts of VM snapshots held in AWS S3. 

Datrium offers DRaaS Connect for two different vSphere deployments: DRaaS Connect for VMware vSphere On Prem and DRaaS Connect for VMware Cloud on AWS. DRaaS Connect for VMware vSphere On Prem extends Datrium DRaaS to any VMware vSphere on-premises infrastructure and provides efficient replication of VMware vSphere snapshots into DRaaS deduplicated, compressed, encrypted snapshot storage on Amazon S3. It is managed by a DRaaS cloud-based control plane to define VM protection groups and their frequency, replication and retention policies. On failback, DRaaS will return only changed blocks back to VMware vSphere and the local on-premises infrastructure through DRaaS Connect.

“Datrium makes the cloud-native future of data center protection a reality today,” said Datrium CEO Tim Page. “With DRaaS, we’ve entirely reshaped how modern enterprises approach DR and have addressed the clear demand for DR solutions that ensure rapid recovery without breaking the bank. Datrium enables organisations to make the cloud their DR data center, delivering 10x or greater cost savings.”

According to the “Ransomware and Disaster Recovery During COVID-19” research, the cloud was identified as a viable and accessible option for DR with 67.5% of respondents’ companies currently leveraging the cloud as part of their DR strategy. Almost all respondents (93.7%) said their company would be willing to adopt cloud DR if they could pay for it on demand and it would protect all of their data, including Edge environments.

DRaaS Connect for VMware Cloud on AWS enables DRaaS to orchestrate failover from a VMware Cloud SDDC in one AWS Availability Zone (AZ) to another AWS AZ. Snapshots of running VMs in the active AZ will be stored in the DRaaS repository on AWS S3. In the event of a disaster, these snapshots can be instantly restarted on ESX hosts in a different AZ, all based on well-defined runbook policies.