// Zerto Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

NEED GUARANTEED DISASTER RECOVERY?

ZERTO DR IS THE SOLUTION

Zerto DR

Having a DR solution in place does not remove the need to back up one's data, however, it does offer guaranteed business continuity when RPO (Recovery Point Objectives) and RTO (Recovery Time Objectives) are too strict for Backup Software to meet alone. Meet Zerto!
Check out a Typical Implementation Timeline.

For Our Cloud/IaaS Clients

Setting up Zerto for our existing Cloud / IaaS clients is very simple. Contact us in order to set this up. Zerto can be setup between a pair of our data centers, or between client's on-prem infrastructure and our data center.

Running VMware On-Prem?

For those running VMware on-prem today, protect existing mission critical virtual workloads into our Cloud. We offer White Glove setup service where we take care of the whole install, free of charge. Contact us for more info.

Direct Layer 2 or IPsecVPN

For replication, clients can get a direct Layer 2 link from an ISP, or we can connect via IPsec L2 VPN. Zerto requires a minimum of 5Mbit for replication, however, we suggest a 50Mbit uplink for better experience.

Data Seeding Service

For clients with large amount of data we can bring over a storage array and pre-seed all of the data on-prem, free of charge. After all - install and setup are free and this is simply a portion of the very same setup service.

Cost Effective Solution

Unlike other providers, we charge for only 1/3 of standby resources (vCPUs and RAM), and 110% for allocated storage (100% that is always in use and 10# overhead for the 24-hour recovery journal). Longer RPOs are available.

Single-click DR Tests & Failover

Clients may test DR with a single click of a mouse, without affecting production. When a disaster occurs, or in a pro-active preparation for a potential disaster, click of a button can migrate client's entire infrastructure to Cloud.

RPO of Less Than 1 Minute

Zerto replicates data with a Recovery Point Objective of less than 1 minute. This is how far behind production the replication will be in case of a full-on failover. Our live production system stats show the effective RPO of ~20 seconds or less.

RTO of Less Than 15 Minutes

From the moment clients click the Failover button it takes less than 15 minutes to spin up entire infrastructure at Cloud Propeller. If that's not impressive, we don't know what is. It's magical to watch it happen, though we all wish no one ever has to.

Preserve Private & Public IPs

Depending on client's ISP, we can engineer a DR solution where client's Public IPs don't change during failover. When this is possible, it can speed up DR Failover and eliminate the need for manual, error-prone, post-failover changes.

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

OHIO CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Ohio Christian University's IT department liked the idea of having their mission critical systems up-and-running in the event their on-prem data center went down for any reason. Secondary Domain Controller, Email, Sonis (on-line student portal), primary file server, and other similar systems were identified as good candidates for machines that would highly benefit from enhanced uptime.

When Jared Bader, Director of IT Infrastructure @ Ohio Christian University, turned to Cloud Propeller for help, he was not disappointed.

Within a week, the free implementation was completed by CP engineers, initial data seed transferred to Cloud Propeller's Data Center in Dublin, Ohio, and BGP peering was configured with OARnet so that OCU's Private and Public IPs stay unchanged during a DR Failover.

In case of an outage (or, pro-actively during a production-impacting maintenance) OCU IT department can fail-over (and back) any VM in under 15 minutes, with a single click of a button.

Let us know how we can assist you...

THIS IS THE USUAL ZERTO DR

IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE

Our DR solution is a white glove, turn-key implementation. We need about 2 hours for the initial discovery session with your engineers, and then we architect, configure and implement the whole Zerto DR solution on your own infrastructure. We will pre-seed the data if necessary, and hand it over to you with full documentation at a training / knowledge transfer session once it's all ready.

Meeting

Stage 1 - Initial Discovery

At this stage we find out how client's on-prem VMware environment is deployed. We collect information on vCenter/ESXi versions, network design, storage configuration, 3rd party extensions you're using, which network and data store we can deploy Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM), and Zerto Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs) on, which network interfaces to use for DR traffic, how client's firewall / router is configured and more. With this information collected, our engineers will present you with one of our pre-defined, tried and tested Zerto deployment scenarios and after; After a brief discussion on pros and cons of choosing a particular solution, both parties agree on the best one to go with. We have done this so many times, this stage actually goes much faster than you'd imagine.


Stage 2 - Zerto Deployment

As soon as Stage 1 is complete and we receive login credentials to your VMware environment, we proceed with installation of ZVM. We configure the DR network and interfaces, deploy ZVM and VRAs, and (if the data set is large enough to warrant it) seed your data to a storage array we bring in just for this purpose. All this can be done while we either work in parallel on setting up an IPsec VPN tunnel or while we wait for your ISP to complete a dedicated Layer 2 circuit for replication.

Zerto Deploy
Network Uplinks

Stage 3 - Network Uplink

Install and config is usually done much faster than the network portion is ready. For this reason we leave the seed storage array connected to client's environment until network connectivity is established. This portion is the only unknown part of the whole deployment as the time it takes for network to be established (if it is a dedicated layer 2 circuit) depends on client's own ISP of choice. If going with our Free (included) IPsec VPN Tunnel instead, this step usually doesn't take longer than 2 hours to set up and configure.


Stage 4 - Delta Sync

With network link established, we bring the seed storage array back into our Data Center and perform an Import and Delta Sync of all VMs that are being protected. This usually takes about a day or two, depending on the size of data and bandwidth throughput capabilities of the replication link. Clients who do not opt to use our free pre-seed service can start protecting VMs immediately.

Delta Sync
Network Config

Stage 5 - DR Router/Firewall Config & Testing

At this stage we configure client's virtual Router/Firewall settings to match what's on-prem. If client already uses a Virtual network appliance (vASA, VyOS, or similar) we can skip this stage altogether as we can simply protect that appliance with Zerto as a whole (or deploy an HA counterpart of it at CP). Lastly - we perform a few, production-non-impacting DR Failover tests and customize the documentation to client's specific config. This way, when auditors show up and ask for a DR plan/procedure, our client can just hand over the documentation we wrote. Neat!


Stage 6 - Handover & Knowledge Transfer

At this stage we handover the customized documentation to client's new DR solution, explain how everything works, and do some knowledge transfer between our engineers and client's IT staff. As expected, this is a fully managed solution, so while we do try and inform our clients in detail about the implementation, even from this point on you can be as hands-on or off as you desire. In case of an emergency or disaster, a simple phone call to our support is all that takes to migrate client's workloads forward into our Cloud or backward - into client's own environment.

DR Documentation

24/7 Support

After implementation we got your back. Our DR solution is fully managed, therefore we will monitor it, keep it up-to-date, assist with protecting new workloads, help during DR tests, and especially during real Disaster events.

Easy Peasy Live & Test Failover

With a single click of a button - clients may choose to Test or perform a full Live Failover, of a single system or entire infrastructure. We are always just phone call away should client wish us to do this instead.

Pay Per Minute During Failover

Full cost of resources is billed hourly and even then only when Test or Live DR scenario is initiated making Zerto a very cost-effective solution.

READY TO SLEEP SOUNDLY AT NIGHT?

CONTACT OUR DR SOLUTIONS TEAM TODAY

We're standing by to assist and answer all of your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery questions.

Call us at (614) 699-0909, email us at hello@cloudpropeller.com, or simply Schedule a Zoom Call at your earliest convenience.