VMware High Availability – How to choose the perfect extension

You might be aware of the fact that VMware includes some basic tools that keep a tab on hardware availability; however, what you would most likely not know is that these tools are not so good at providing application protection. Allegedly, these tools do not have the sophistication and intelligence required for this purpose. In the wake of these events, what you probably need is an extension that works in integration with VMware high availability, and can provide automated protection for all your virtualized applications.

Easier said than done; in all probability, you would not be able to spot the right extension, especially if you are finding one for the first time. However, there is nothing to worry about; things would be a lot easier if you know what to look for. By and large, this is what you should focus on to be able to make a smart choice:

Ease of usage – It goes without saying that the perfect extension for VMware high availability should not only be easy to use but also in tandem with your RTO (read: recovery time objective). Moreover, you should be able to integrate it with your existing VMware infrastructure without much difficulty.
Reduction in operating costs – Believe it or not but an extension that doesn’t eventually lead to a reduction in the operating costs would do you no good; avoid it, if possible. However, the said reduction shouldn’t take a toll on the other benefits that the perfect extension is supposed to bring along. Here, it is worth mentioning that these benefits include, but are not limited to an improvement in application availability as well as personal productivity.

Optimization – The perfect extension has to have everything that it takes to optimize high availability as well as performance. Needless to say, it should pass down the benefit of optimization to RTO, thereby creating a favorable scenario.

Nevertheless, just like finding the perfect extension, you may also have a hard time looking for the ideal solution for SAP disaster recovery. However, this could be a cakewalk if you consider the following points:

The 3 R’s – Experts suggest that any solution that you use for this purpose should preferably focus on the 3 R’s of data protection; these include ‘replicate’, ‘rewind’, and ‘recover. A solution doesn’t fulfill the said criterion would most likely not serve the purpose.

Fail over – By and large, you would come across two types of fail overs – unattended and manual. Therefore, it is important that the ideal solution for SAP disaster recovery comes in handy in either of the aforementioned situations.