Newsworthy data protection with Zerto
Last month, HPE completed the acquisition of Zerto. This is great news for HPE customers.
The Zerto Platform™ is based on a foundation of continuous data protection (CDP) and brings together disaster recovery and data protection into a single and simple cloud data management and protection solution – across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
The deal added an industry leader in cloud data management and protection to the HPE portfolio, and, with this transaction, HPE extends its reach in the data protection market. More importantly, this adds another means for customers like you to protect your most important and valuable applications and data.
The more recent news involving Zerto is its inclusion in an announcement about HPE GreenLake cloud services for data protection. This press release featured a series of new cloud services for the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform – services that help deliver digital transformation for customer apps and data.
Within the HPE portfolio, Zerto becomes “HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery” and has the specific mission to backup critical customer data and deliver best-in-class restore times that won’t impact business operations. This non-disruptive data restore was documented in a customer case about a ransomware incident experienced by a Dutch textiles company, TenCate. Despite having their systems infected and files encrypted by ransomware, they were able to quickly regain control with Zerto – only experiencing 10 seconds of data loss and taking just 10 minutes to recover. Groundbreaking.
SQL Server gets the HPE GreenLake treatment
Also in the HPE GreenLake newsfeed was Microsoft SQL Server, featuring the rollout of a new offering making quality HPE Storage infrastructure for this leading business database now available on a pay-per-use basis. The new solution, HPE GreenLake for Microsoft SQL Server, features pay-per-use pricing, plus point-and-click self-service and cloud-like flexibility, but with the control and security of on-premises IT. This feature boasts a 30 to 40 per cent TCO savings from not having to over-provision hardware.
As SQL Server continues to be a leader in relational database management – with many Microsoft customers choosing to maintain their corporate data on-premises – using new HPE GreenLake services for these Microsoft workloads is a huge value add. As quoted in a trade publication by Microsoft Vice President, Roanne Soanes, “The shared work to integrate HPE GreenLake with Microsoft offerings gives our customers a managed services solution that offers simplicity, flexibility, and the economics that work for their environments...”
Need for SQL Server data protection
It’s no coincidence that innovative data protection services are evolving and expanding along with the growth of business-critical data housed in corporate data centers. When addressing the specific challenges surrounding SQL Server, it has been recognized for some time that a disaster or failure impacting a Microsoft SQL Server environment can not only result in data loss, but also impact employee productivity, corporate brand value and reliability, and of course, revenue. Zerto has had products and practices in place for some time addressing how to protect SQL Server.
There are many approaches to data protection, whether array-based, application-based, software or cloud-based – each with its own pros and cons. For important transactional database protection however, there is special consideration given to the ability to establish data protection within an otherwise complex environment with minimal integration or specific application expertise required, to ensure application consistency of the data, and to rapidly recover data in times of crisis.
A newer, though increasingly important feature now, is the ability to enable data mobility, whether to clone data as part of a test/dev task, or to migrate entire databases across datacenter locations and clouds.
Zerto for SQL Server data protection and mobility
There’s a lot of information – and much has been written in the past – on Zerto as a means to protect SQL Server. Highlighted below are some of the key features and best practices that stand out with leveraging Zerto to protect your Microsoft SQL Server environment:
As database instances in an environment increases, so does the complexity and requirements when it comes to disaster recovery and replication. Having a simple, easy to use backup/recovery product becomes essential.
Like ransomware protection of servers/files, Zerto offers quick exact point-in-time recovery for SQL database failures. As mentioned earlier, this is valuable for thwarting ransomware attacks, and also for granular restores to specific points in time.
Quick failover, or migration from primary to alternate servers, with data having been kept consistent between the locations – provides a heterogeneous alternative to having to manage application-specific technologies.
Easy VM replication, and immediate recovery of VMware disk files leverages admin familiarity and knowledge with VMware operation.
Zerto’s centralized UI to restore data from across one or more managed environments negates the need to interact with multiple proprietary interfaces. This is especially important when rapid recovery is required to keep a business going.
Call to action
If you haven’t taken the opportunity already, check out the news about the addition of Zerto to the HPE GreenLake portfolio, and also access the great data protection content still available through the original Zerto.com site.
To learn more about another HPE GreenLake innovation bringing cloud value to on-premises data, read up on the new SQL Server on HPE Storage as an HPE GreenLake solution.
Mike Schneider
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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MikeSchneider
Meet HPE Storage Blogger, Mike Schneider. Mike is a veteran storage professional who has been testing storage systems and related solutions for many years, and has been providing solutions for Microsoft products including Windows Server, SQL, and Exchange for customers on various HPE hardware platforms.
