RecoverPoint for VMs – now available for free download..!

EMC announced RecoverPoint for VMs in August last year which redefines the data protection for virtualized environments. It allows the administrator for easy recovery to any Point-in-Time, at VM level granularity. This allows the specific VM to have the protection defined – but not at the datastores/LUN level – with both local and remote replication capability.

Now we can download this product for free..!! Only need to pay for support.

You can download RecoverPoint for VMs from this page.  You can find the system requiremetns etc.. also in the same page.

Let’s now get into more of this product,

RecoverPoint for VMs works at the HyperVisor layer, with the embedded splitter (Embedded Hypervisor Splitter) at the vSphere Kernel . It works at the virtual SCSI layer of the ESXi. We have to install this in ESXis of whose VMs need to be protected and this is done through standard VIB. Hence RP for VMs is Storage-agnositc and supports various SAN, NAS, DAS and vSAN systems available.

As per the data protection policies set on each VM, all the write data are duplicated and sent to the virtual appliance for journaling (the other copy goes to the VMDK for the VM as usual). This defines the protection for the VM. Consistency Groups are also available and we can have the VMs part of Consistency groups according to the protection requirements.

vCenter Plugin for RecoverPoint for VMs makes things easy for administrators. The management of RecoverPoint Virual Appliances are performed via this plugin. We have to install this plugin in all the vCenter servers which are part of the replicated environment. Recovery opeartions can only be performed via vCenter Plugin for RecoverPoint for VMs.

Policy templates are available to administrators for defining protection for VMs. Administrators can define his own custom policies also as per requirement. These policies enables the admin to define the various attribute settings including RPO, WAN optimization and protection window. A VM which is ongoing a storage vMotion or vMotion, will still remain protected with RecoverPoint.

The image below shows the local and Remote data protection with RecoverPoint for VMs, also makes easy for us to understand various components in the data flow.

You can read more specifications here.

Thus the software is now free. If you have the lab set up, it’s your time to do all the testing with the new Software Defined VM Protection.