Backup for Virtualization

Loudoun County turns to Vizioncore vRanger Pro to protect VMware servers.

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Amy has worked on StateTech since May 2007. As managing editor, she shapes editorial content for print and online. Before that, she spent 10 years at Network World as senior managing editor of features and managing editor of features. Amy began her IT publishing career at PC Week. While out of the office, she enjoys traveling and rooting for the Red Sox.

Loudoun County's VMware rollout went swimmingly -- the Virginia county virtualized more than one-third of its 200 Windows Servers. But one thing the deployment complicated was backup.

Michael Avera, a network engineer for Loudoun County, points out that migrating VMware servers for continuity of operations is a simple feat. "But what happens if you lose the file itself?" he asks.

"In the virtual infrastructure, that server is just a file," Avera says. "If something happens to where it's stored, it's pretty much gone forever unless you have a backup of it."

With multiple operating systems and virtual instances running on a single physical server, all those backups compete for resources and can overload the machine or affect other applications. It's also a challenge for organizations to avoid overlapping backup windows.

For those reasons, Avera sought a solution to ease file-level backups of VMware servers. He found it in Vizioncore's vRanger Pro. By deploying vRanger Pro and beefing up the county's storage area network, Loudoun County's IT department was able to remove traditional backup agents from servers and better position itself for disaster recovery.

"It has given us the ability to bring back Tier 1 applications in our secondary site in minutes," Avera says. "With vRanger Pro, it took five minutes to restore a full system and have it live, whereas before it would have taken a day."

Such peace of mind is useful as Loudoun County continues to virtualize servers and build out its SAN.