SOFTBANK TELECOM and Xsigo Systems Demonstrate Automated Solution for Virtual Machine Disaster Recovery

Logistics Insight Asia - Technology & Market Trends, 4/6/2008

Xsigo Systems and SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp. have demonstrated an automated disaster recovery solution that allows VMware virtual machines to be automatically failed over between sites which are over 500 KM apart. Built on a Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure, the solution dramatically accelerates system recovery times, reduces the need for manual intervention, and minimizes business loss due to system downtime.

The demonstration included the automatic transfer of a complete system environment to another data center and rapid recovery from a system failure, enabled by a Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure consisting of Xsigo VP780 I/O Directors and wide area SONET technology. The solution successfully transferred both the virtual machine environment and the virtual storage environment quickly and automatically between SOFTBANK TELECOM data centers in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan.

While redundant systems are essential for mission critical applications, the cost of creating and maintaining comprehensive disaster recovery systems remains a hurdle. Furthermore, the data recovery process remains a complex, manual procedure that may take days to complete. By virtualizing server I/O, the Xsigo I/O Director delivers a flexible server I/O infrastructure, with remote management and clustering capabilities that simplify and accelerate long-distance disaster recovery.

The solution demonstrated these industry firsts:

· Recovery automation for virtual machines
By automating virtual machine failover among sites, the solution accelerated recovery times and nearly eliminated the need for manual intervention. Furthermore, during partial system failure, such as the failure of a specific server, storage or network device, available spare systems at the remote site were used to minimize performance impact.

· Server I/O across Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure
The demonstration showed that server I/O using Xsigo virtual I/O technology can be interconnected across multiple data centers separated by lengthy distances. In the past, server I/O technologies were used solely within data centers. Extending the server I/O enabled seamless server and storage connectivity among physically distant locations to simplify virtual machine management across sites.

The Xsigo VP780 I/O Director is distributed in Japan through Xsigo Systems' partner, Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation (SCS). SCS provided the technical assistance necessary to complete this demonstration successfully.

Xsigo Systems, www.xsigo.co.jp.