News

Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Product Released as Preview

Microsoft Azure Site Recovery, previously called Hyper-V Recovery Manager, is now available in preview, Microsoft said on Thursday.

First announced at last month's TechEd conference, Azure Site Recovery is more than a rebranded version of Microsoft's old disaster recovery (DR) tool; it also represents Microsoft's effort to make Azure a hot site for data recovery. While Hyper-V Recovery Manager, released in January, provides point-to-point replication, Microsoft says Azure Site Recovery aims to eliminate the need for a secondary datacenter or hot site just for backup and recovery.

"What if you don't have a secondary location?" was the question posed by Matt McSpirit, a Microsoft technical product manager, during the TechEd opening keynote. "Microsoft Azure Site Recovery [provides] replication and recovery of your on-premises private clouds into the Microsoft Azure datacenters."

The original Hyper-V Recovery Manager required a secondary datacenter. "When first released, the service provided for replication and orchestrated recovery between two of your sites, or from your site to a supporting hoster's site," Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday. "But now you can avoid the expense and complexity of building and managing your own secondary site for DR. You can replicate running virtual machines to Azure and recover there when needed."

Microsoft says both offer automated protection, continuous health monitoring and orchestrated recovery of applications. Azure Site Recovery also protects Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) clouds by setting up automated replication of the virtual machines (VMs), which can be performed based on policies. It integrates with Microsoft's Hyper-V Replica and the new SQL Server AlwaysOn feature.

Azure Site Recovery monitors clouds with SCVMM remotely and continuously, according to Microsoft. All links with Azure are encrypted in transit with the option for encryption of replicated data at rest. Also, Microsoft said administrators can recover VMs in an orchestrated manner to enable quick recoveries, even in the case of multi-tier workloads.

Customers can test Azure Site Recovery in the Azure Preview Portal.

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

Featured

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.

  • Report: Security Initiatives Can't Keep Pace with Cloud, AI Boom

    The increasingly fast adoption of hybrid, multicloud, and AI systems is easily outgrowing existing security measures, according to a recent global survey by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and exposure management firm Tenable.

Most   Popular