Cassatt applies internal cloud concept to disaster recovery

Cassatt Corporation has successfully tested a new, cost-effective solution to data center disaster recovery that uses an internal cloud computing approach to make use of the virtual and physical resources that organizations already have inside their data centers rather than require dedicated set-ups or outsourcing services.

While the term internal, or private, cloud has been a hotly debated topic, Cassatt customers are testing the concept out for themselves on their toughest disaster recovery challenges and finding it both quick to recover and cost-effective.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is among the first to test-drive Cassatt's data center disaster recovery features. According to Joe Klosky, senior technical advisor to the CIO at the FDA, "We tested the Cassatt software to manage our existing, standard virtualization environment, in addition to some very large complex systems. We were impressed with the automatic failover and recovery of both. We then successfully tested automated failover to pools of servers in a cloud, and leveraged Cassatt Active Response profiles to define priorities. We tested this solution inside of the data center and found that fully configured servers were back online in a handful of minutes. When we tested remote recovery across dark fiber networks, Cassatt Active Response moved the high-priority servers and services to the remote site without any issue. Being able to leverage existing resources for disaster recovery is a significant step forward in terms of cost, better use of staff, and business continuity."

The Cassatt disaster recovery solution enables organizations to use its policy-based automation software to find available pools of spare servers onto which failed applications can be re-provisioned and re-started.

"An internal cloud approach," Klosky said, "means that we do not have to pay for costly service contracts with outsourcers, nor do we have to dedicate rooms full of servers to sit idly by just in case of a serious problem. The other benefit we saw from the Cassatt solution was the speed with which we could return to operation after a computing disaster. In one example, Cassatt had recovered our systems in 45 minutes, something which had taken a lot longer following our previous approach. And once normal operations were again possible, it was seamless to have Cassatt shift things back to the way things were prior to the failure."

The Cassatt internal cloud-based disaster recovery solution is available using the currently shipping version of Cassatt Active Response coupled with installation help from Cassatt's professional services team.

http://www.cassatt.com/

•Date:3rd April 2009• Region: US •Type: Article •Topic: IT continuity
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