Maximizing Business
Continuity with VMware
in the Cloud:
A Decision-Maker’s Guide
A brief note Table of Contents
Improving IT resiliency and maintaining business
continuity are more important than ever for any
enterprise in the digital era. The flexibility and
agility of cloud makes it an optimal solution to Chapter 1: Business continuity
maintain business continuity. The cloud can plus cloud is a
mitigate risks of downtime ensuring continuous winning combination
business operations. In fact, most IT decision-
makers are looking at the cloud as a solution to Chapter 2: Capitalizing on current
improve uptime, performance and availability of VMware investments
applications, data and workloads.
Chapter 3: Finding the right cloud
In the chapters to follow, we break down how to
provider for optimal
develop a business continuity strategy in the cloud
business continuity
with a focus on VMware workloads; and provide a
series of considerations to enable the best decision
when choosing a public cloud environment. Chapter 4: What to look for in a public
cloud platform
Chapter 5: Planning and next steps
Chapter 1: Over the past decade, backup and disaster recovery have served as the gateway to the
cloud for many organizations. Public cloud has typically delivered cost efficiencies and
Business increased agility without requiring major investments in hardware, software, networks,
personnel or physical space. These benefits have offered enterprises the flexibility to
continuity optimize their spending and speed—at any given time—by dialing up and down their
consumption based on need.
plus cloud
is a winning In today’s world, it’s not just about backup and recovery; it’s also about ensuring
business is always up and running and that organizations are able to recover
combination applications, data and workloads completely and quickly. Any failure in doing so
creates risk of losing revenue, brand confidence and customer good will. In essence,
we’re talking about overall business continuity.
Business continuity comprises backup and recovery as well as high availability of
mission critical applications and workloads at any given time.
As companies embrace digital transformation, they are seeing a Critical Decisions
corresponding increase in the cost and impact of downtime. As IT teams expand their focus
from cloud backup and recovery
•• Application downtime now costs the average enterprise to business continuity and high
$20.1 million in lost revenue and productivity.1 availability, they must consider:
•• Lost data from mission critical application downtime costs •• Which technologies to use
more than $102,000 per hour.2 •• Which public cloud platform
to implement
•• The average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million globally—rising
by $300,000 for companies undergoing a major cloud migration. 3 •• Which workloads to prioritize
1 “2019 Cloud Data Management Report,” Veeam, June 2019.
2 Ibid.
3 “2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report,” IBM and Ponemon Institute, June 2019.
Chapter 2: Most enterprises have discovered that leveraging VMware across on-premises
infrastructure and public cloud is the optimal path to ensuring business continuity for
Capitalizing mission critical applications. Keeping the VMware technology stack as part of
the cloud strategy can decrease risks and maximize existing investments during
on current digital transformation.
VMware VMware is the predominant virtualization platform for on-premises deployments of
investments mission critical applications. With that, there are many industry leading companies
like Veeam and Zerto that offer solutions specifically for VMware across public cloud
and on-premises infrastructure to simplify and enhance resiliency. As a result, more
and more cloud providers are building integration and automation around these
solutions on top of the VMware technology stack to further accelerate configuration
and deployment.
Critical Decisions
OSRAM
Mission critical applications are intertwined with
many other applications, including vital databases,
OLTP systems, financial systems, web sites, HR and
To kick-start its business transformation, OSRAM focused many more. Companies must determine:
on gaining agility, and chose to migrate its business to
IBM Cloud pursuing a multi-cloud strategy. •• How to ensure all application dependencies
are considered.
Learn how the migration was simplified using virtual replication •• How to consistently manage and monitor
solutions from Zerto on IBM Cloud. governance, performance, SLAs and compliance.
•• How to maximize business continuity, including
backup, recovery and high availability.
Chapter 3: If the decision is to continue using VMware for mission critical applications in the
cloud, then choosing the right enterprise-grade cloud provider is key to a successful
Finding the implementation. Further, it is critical when ensuring the necessary procedures and
safety nets are in place to maintain continuous business operations.
right cloud
Before laying out a business continuity strategy in the cloud, take a moment to
provider consider the below questions and work with the broader team to align on the input
for optimal and priorities. Then, challenge cloud providers on these questions and require
answers before agreeing to partner with them on the strategy.
business
continuity
Q
What are the business case, objectives and benefits? Are the benefits measureable?
Where to start and what workloads should be prioritized?
For reference, we’ve
A
outlined general
guidelines in the Having a clear set of objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) will keep the
form of answers (A.) project focused and on track. For example, many organizations have multiple RTOs
to enable planning and RPOs that reflect the importance of each workload to their business, thus these
and discussions with should be considered when mapping out key objectives. Not having clear and deliberate
objectives will muddy the process and likely create confusion, frustration and conflicting
internal teams as well
priorities with no productive path forward. The result will be extra expense, time and
as potential providers.
resources spent and no real goal accomplished. Business-justified and goal-oriented
objectives are key.
Q Q
If mission critical workloads in the cloud is the decided What is an acceptable level of risk? Business continuity is
strategy, then what are other applications and associated all about risk management. Is any downtime acceptable?
dependencies to consider? What RPOs and RTOs are required? What are the specific
A
performance SLAs and compliance requirements that must
If it is mission critical it is likely tied to underlying be met? What about storage and backup requirements?
A
OLTP systems, financial systems, web applications and
more. Consider how to address the full scope of each This goes back to knowing, prioritizing and
application’s dependencies without affecting business communicating the business and migration requirements.
continuity. This is a key question to ask any provider Be realistic about the expectations, and know what is
that is being considered. They should have a clear and needed and ask for it! Identify which provider can offer
concise response to how their platform supports business the most comprehensive support and plan while meeting
continuity and ensures high availability of mission critical all the “must have” requirements.
applications end to end.
Q Q
What features and capabilities are required? For Does the cloud provider support a well-rounded
example, is a snapshot-based replication or continuous ecosystem of skills, expertise and tools? Can services
replication needed? easily be extended to access best-of-breed solutions
A
for backup, disaster recovery and high availability?
A
If the business case is clearly articulated, then it can
be better determined what is needed to achieve the Backup, recovery and high availability are specialized
objectives. These requirements should be addressed functions—particularly in the cloud. Many enterprises
and prioritized before choosing any solution. Knowing partner with leading software providers that specialize
the required features and capabilities ahead of time in areas like high availability and that can offer the
gives immediate control over the conversation. expertise and tools to round out the coverage. For
Communicating requirements up front forces providers to example, companies such as Veeam and Zerto are widely
respond directly to said requirements—or not. Ultimately, known and often used for their disaster recovery and
the ability to narrow down the provider field becomes backup solutions. Veeam and Zerto deliver key capabilities
easier and is based on which partner can best support enterprises are seeking, including breakthrough RTOs
these requirements. and RPOs and disaster recovery as a service. Identify the
public cloud provider that offers tight integrations with
these leading business continuity platforms and ask
if these services can easily be leveraged for mission
critical applications.
Top 5
Critical Decisions
business continuity Answering the core questions
capabilities to seek will raise others:
•• Resources: Does the
1
organization have the
personnel resources and
Access to full VMware cloud stack skills in-house, or is an
experienced partner or
vendor needed to bridge
2
the gap?
Pervasive automation for setup and operations •• Costs: How much will it
cost and is there a way
to measure total cost of
ownership (TCO) or return
3
on investment (RTO)?
High availability at the VM level •• Timing: Is there a hard
deadline, such as the
end of support for a key
4
application like SAP?
RPOs near zero with zero data loss
5 RTOs in minutes
Chapter 4: If you have decided to leverage cloud to implement your solutions, perhaps the most
critical question to answer is this:
What to Which company will earn your trust as an enterprise-grade cloud provider?
look for in a
This is for you to decide. Use the guidance offered in the previous section and
public cloud identify the provider that best meets the business, application and high availability
platform requirements as well as the level of support and expertise needed to be successful.
We know these are hard decisions to make and research is critical. Here is some
key information on why IBM Cloud should be considered for your business
continuity strategy.
Introducing IBM Cloud
IBM does three main things differently than other cloud providers:
Value: Customers can get unlimited, no-cost data replication within more
than 60 Global IBM Cloud data centers for site-to-site recovery.
Control: Hypervisor and bare metal access allows enterprises to maintain
existing disaster recovery tooling and functionality, while gaining the
agility and scalability of the cloud.
Choice: Customers can leverage flexible deployment and storage options
to implement a multitiered disaster recovery and backup strategy.
In addition, IBM offers customers a broad ecosystem of experts and partners Overall, the benefits
to tap into in developing a business continuity strategy and executing on the of using IBM Cloud for
plan. IBM services has thousands of VMware technical experts with years of VMware Mission Critical
experience helping clients adopt and deploy a hybrid cloud strategy including Workloads include:
a fully managed or shared approach on VMware on IBM Cloud. Industry
leaders Veeam and Zerto are part of the portfolio of services by IBM Business •• SLAs of up to four nines at
the VM level
Resiliency Services to expand data protection and recovery options.
•• Full recovery in minutes
With IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads, enterprises can meet
•• Zero data loss, with near
today’s demands for business continuity, including high availability, fast zero RPOs
recovery times, automated failover and zero data loss when recovering from
downtime events. The solution uses pervasive automation to simplify moving •• Automated failover via
dual-site design
applications to the cloud, including lift-and-shift migrations.
•• No-cost replication between
IBM Cloud is also ahead of the curve in supporting vSAN Stretched Clusters. IBM Cloud data centers
With vSAN Stretched Clusters, customer data is managed and replicated •• Tiered backup solutions
across multiple IBM Cloud data centers within regions, ensuring zero data loss
•• Hardware-enforced security
in the event of a full site failure.
technology
•• Automated compliance
support
•• Augmented architecture
Movius
capabilities to support
applications not built for
the cloud
With IBM Cloud and the Veeam on IBM Cloud backup and restore service, Movius provides
•• Availability as a managed
its MultiLine offering to global enterprises boosting agility, strengthening focus and
supporting availability. service or customer-managed
Learn how Movius went global on the IBM public cloud with business continuity as a top priority.
Chapter 5: When it comes to cloud-based business continuity plans, for most enterprises the issue
is not whether to do so, but when and how. IT decision-makers and business leaders
Planning must be assured that implementing business continuity solutions to the cloud will not
interrupt business in any way, shape or form.
and
Relying on proven platforms, technology leaders and companies that understand
next steps enterprise-grade requirements is critical. Leveraging platforms that support a broad
range of industry solutions that are compatible with an existing technology stack to
mitigate risks matters. Whether that is the use of automation, high availability or any
other solution—having the ability to tap into these services quickly and easily whenever
the time is right is an important detail that is often overlooked.
The combination of VMware and IBM Cloud offers leading business continuity
capabilities, particularly with IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads and
tight integrations with Veeam and Zerto for disaster and recovery. With industry leading
RTO and RPO capabilities, customers can be confident that business applications will
be available, whether on premises or in the cloud.
Ready to maximize business continuity in the cloud? Learn how to make this happen
with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.
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