ASR Now Supports NetApp Private Storage for Microsoft Azure

This week at Ignite 2015 in Chicago, Microsoft and NetApp will showcase how customers can simplify disaster recovery for Hyper-V workloads without investing in a secondary datacenter. Together, we will demo how Azure Site Recovery (ASR) can replicate and recover a SAN-based on-premises application to Azure compute with NetApp Private Storage (NPS) for Microsoft Azure. Enterprise customers can connect Azure compute resources to the NetApp Private Storage collocated in Equinix datacenters over the Equinix Cloud Exchange. With ASR and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), enterprise customers can enable array-based replication from their on-premises NetApp FAS Storage to NetApp Private Storage for Azure. Hyper-V virtual machines deployed on-premises can then be failed over to Azure and connected to the replicated storage LUNs via iSCSI. Moving SAN-based workloads to Azure relies on two key replication capabilities that are already Generally Available with ASR:

• ASR replication to mirror the OS drives of the Hyper-V virtual machine between on-premises private cloud and Azure. You will need to enable protection for your Hyper-V virtual machines between the on-premises VMM site and Azure
• NetApp Storage array-based SnapMirror replication to mirror the data disks between on-premises private cloud and NetApp Private Storage at an Equinix datacenter collocated with Azure. You will need to enable protection for your Replication Groups between the on-premises site and NPS using array-based replication

The solution topology is shown in the diagram below: With SCVMM, ASR, and NPS, customers can enable seamless end-to-end storage array-based replication and disaster recovery for SAN-based Hyper-V workloads directly to Azure compute connected to NPS:

• NEW Move SAN-Based Applications to Azure: ASR and SCVMM automate the creation and management of all target objects - both storage and compute - to ensure that recovery is guaranteed to work. Protection and Recovery are Virtual Machine and Storage aware, cutting down on manual steps and multiple administrator roles that are traditionally needed in recovering a workload post disaster
• NEW Support for NetApp Private Storage for Microsoft Azure: Enterprise customers can build an agile cloud infrastructure that combines the scalability and flexibility of Azure with the control and performance of NetApp storage for Tier 1 applications such as SQL Server, SAP etc.
• NEW Multi-VM Consistency and Replications Groups: Protect and replicate multiple virtual machines together, thereby expanding support for n-tier applications that require application tiers to replicate consistently and failover at the same time. With data disks replicated to NPS, leverage Azure Internal Load Balancing (ILB) to bring up the shared disk SQL Server cluster online in Azure

By using ASR in combination with SnapMirror, NetApp customers can protect their virtualized business-critical workloads, such as databases and email with simple-to-deploy disaster recovery. Customers that use SnapMirror for ASR SAN replication can confidently run their enterprise application workloads on Hyper-V, knowing that they have enhanced disaster protection for those workloads. To see the solution in action, check out the following video that demonstrates how you can replicate and failover an on-premises SQL Server Cluster with Shared Disks to Azure:

• ASR Replication is used to replicate the OS drives of the two-node SQL Server cluster to Azure
• NetApp SnapMirror array-based replication is used to replicate the data and quorum disks from the on-premises SAN to NPS
• ASR orchestrates the end-to-end flow, seamlessly enabling replication and failing over the SQL Server cluster to Azure compute connected to NPS
• ASR automates the creation and management of all target objects - both storage and compute - to ensure that recovery is guaranteed to work

For more information on how to setup replication and disaster recovery for your SAN-based Hyper-V workloads to NPS, check out this new whitepaper from NetApp that details the solution configuration and testing whitepaper. You can also read more about it on the NetApp blog. The solution is a result of extensive investments in standards-based storage management by Microsoft, NetApp, and other storage companies. Learn more about it in this Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) blog. Visit the Azure Site Recovery forum on MSDN for additional information and to engage with other customers. You will need System Center VMM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 5.0 to enable Storage Array-Based Replication and Disaster Recovery between a Hyper-V Site and Azure. For more information, check out the Azure Site Recovery documentation. Now we’ve made it easier to try Azure Site Recoveryto enable Availability on Demand, and to extend and help protect your datacenter. You can use the powerful replication capabilities of Site Recovery for 31 days at no charge for every new physical server or virtual machine that you replicate.