NetApp announced support for VMware Site Recovery Manager, a product from VMware for disaster recovery management and automation. This support provides customers with a disaster recovery solution built with VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Infrastructure, and NetApp FAS storage systems. In addition, both companies will also offer an improved customer experience with the Virtualization Escalation Team (VET), a new joint customer support group.

While disaster recovery is imperative to long-term business success, recovery from site failures remains one of the most difficult and complex aspects of IT. As a result organizations find themselves unable to provide sufficient disaster recovery protection for more than a small subset of their production systems. Now all NetApp FAS series customers can leverage VMware Site Recovery Manager for rapid, reliable, and affordable automated site disaster recovery. Furthermore, NetApp and VMware enable easier, more frequent disaster recovery tests by creating instant virtual machine and data set clones. Customers also receive enhanced application protection for virtualized applications via integration with NetApp SnapMirror and FlexClone. Other NetApp data recovery solutions, such as Protection Manager, and the soon-to-be-available SnapManager for Virtualized Infrastructure, provide complementary options that customers can utilize. This array of choices gives customers a broad set of valuable tools to use when deploying their business-critical applications on the VMware virtualization platform.

The VET, which expands upon the current joint support provided to customers, establishes a globally staffed, 24x7 direct contact path between the VMware and NetApp support organizations. As customers continue to deploy business-critical environments on VMware virtualization, they want to be certain that their technology partners will continue to provide rapid and efficient support. The cooperative support process enables customer problems to be worked to completion in a seamless manner, with technical support engineers communicating directly with each other to resolve issues efficiently.

“NetApp’s support for VMware Site Recovery Manager will allow our joint customers to overcome the challenges that previously made rapid and reliable disaster recovery difficult or sometimes even impossible,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Alliances at VMware. “Together, these products provide customers with a robust disaster recovery solution that reduces the risk, cost, and complexity associated with traditional disaster recovery approaches.”

A prime example of how NetApp and VMware are partnering to improve disaster recovery for organizations is through their work with SAP. NetApp and VMware, both members of the SAP Co-Innovation Lab, have worked with SAP through involvement in the lab to build a fully integrated and ready to deploy Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) solution for SAP solution-based environments. This solution is based on VMware Site Recovery Manager and NetApp Snap software including SnapManager and SnapMirror. The solution enables customers using SAP solutions to harness the simplicity and security of NetApp software with the flexibility offered by VMware for a DR/BC solution that offers database-consistent recovery, ease of testing DR procedures and complete recovery of SAP solution-based landscapes at the secondary site without impacting the primary site.

“SAP is a leader in building a customer-focused ecosystem by delivering an open business process platform and by fostering collaboration with and between partners to help customers succeed through IT-driven business innovation,” said Richard Probst, vice president, Solution Co-Innovation, SAP. “Disaster recovery is a critical issue, and SAP was delighted to welcome NetApp and VMware to the SAP Co-Innovation Lab to prove this solution for SAP customers. We are continuing to collaborate with our partners NetApp and VMware through their involvement in the Co-Innovation Lab, helping SAP customers to leverage virtualization in their data centers to drive efficiencies and reduce costs.”

“This initiative takes a giant step in making disaster recovery in virtualized environments even easier than before,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing for NetApp. “By integrating NetApp’s remote replication solutions with VMware Site Recovery Manager, customers are able to protect their virtual infrastructures by using the same proven NetApp systems and software that they’ve relied on in their physical infrastructure. Furthermore, VET is an important step in the evolution of the support relationship, offering a positive experience for customers.”