New StorPool KVM disaster recovery service aids adoption
New Disaster Recover Engine service by StorPool Storage enables automated snapshot and metadata recovery of KVMs in open source cloud platforms.
StorPool Storage, a software-defined storage platform vendor, now provides KVM backup and recovery capabilities for open source cloud infrastructure.
StorPool Disaster Recovery Engine (DRE) enables KVM recovery for Apache CloudStack, OpenStack, OpenNebula and Proxmox cloud infrastructure platforms. The service uses console interfaces similar to the VMware Live Recovery service by Broadcom, according to StorPool spokespeople in a media briefing.
The capability offers IT generalists more straightforward management of KVMs, including migrations and restorations within these infrastructure platforms, said Marc Staimer, founder and president of Dragon Slayer Consulting.
Platform or infrastructure engineering teams can implement recovery services for KVMs independently, but restoring those snapshots isn't straightforward for less specialized IT employees, he said. Bringing automation to the process like other paid virtualization platforms offer can make KVM adoption more straightforward.
"You don't need to be a storage administrator to use this if you're using the cloud management platform," he said.
StorPool’s platform is sold primarily to infrastructure and platform providers as a managed service, and is priced according to the total storage used by the platform, according to the vendor. All new features and capabilities are included.
The service is available in beta mode today, with a full release expected later this year.
New models for backups
StorPool DRE offers traditional disaster recovery protection, such as a primary workload backing up to and recovering from another server, or a bi-directional model where two servers support each other's workloads. Data is protected using snapshots with additional metadata saved in these snapshots to protect specific configurations, according to StorPool.
The service also offers two other recovery models using the software, including a many-to-one model, enabling a handful of primary servers and workloads to backup to and recover from a single server or a multi-site mesh across several interconnected servers.
The costly and confusing nature of KVM backups was a common sticking point raised by StorPool's infrastructure platform customers, said Alex Ivanov, head of product at StorPool Storage.
For example, CloudSigma, a Switzerland-based private cloud vendor and StorMagic customer, wanted to adopt KVM platforms for themselves and customers over closed source alternatives, Ivanov said. However, the company also wanted to avoid having to manually create and manage such a capability across its 31 datacenters.
Using the DRE capability and the multi-site mesh model, CloudSigma's customers now choose recovery sites for recovery and know that a failover option is available to other locations, he said. The customers can start recovery anytime through their CloudSigma portal.
That cloud-like experience of recovery from a web console is a major advantage of commercial virtualization software offerings like VMware, Staimer said. Customers want to experiment with KVM environments and migrations, but have built entire careers and decades of muscle memory on VMware's platforms and experiences.
"The big friction people have when moving away from VMware is a [need for] a similar experience," Staimer said. "They don’t have that experience with open source cloud management."
The ongoing discussion surrounding VMware contracts under Broadcom means customers may be considering KVM alternatives for workloads, so tools that replicate what other IT employees already know would expedite adoption, said Krista Case, an analyst at the Futurum Group.
"[Customers] are using it as an opportunity to reevaluate workloads," Case said. "If you can streamline [operations] for your IT generalist, that will encourage adoption."
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.
