Continuity Software is set to debut a new version of its RecoverGuard enterprise-class disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) testing and monitoring software Monday that promises to bring best practices for business continuity to the private cloud.
The RecoverGuard software monitors and validates a customer’s DR environment to detect so-called configuration drifts, or changes between primary and secondary data centers that might affect the data recovery process in the event of an outage.
The latest version, RecoverGuard version 5.2, features the new Private Cloud Advisor which was designed to enable customers to fully ensure availability, recoverability and adherence to industry best practices in the private cloud.
Continuity’s founder and CEO Gil Hecht defines the private cloud as nothing more than a number of virtual machines (VM) on top of a cluster of VMware ESX servers, supported by shared storage. But that simple concept can wreak havoc in DR and HA environments.
“Every time you add a VM or make any infrastructure change you change the configuration of the ESX server. This creates a configuration drift between clustered ESX servers and causes inconsistencies in storage configurations,” said Hecht. “[This leads to] a disaster recovery configuration drift in the private cloud and creates data protection risks.”
Hecht said the private cloud is also prone to availability relocations, best practice and SLA violations and recoverability challenges.
“RecoverGuard v5.2 enables customers to completely eliminate these risks and vulnerabilities – essentially making the cloud, infrastructure aware,” he said.
RecoverGuard draws from a knowledgebase of more than 4,000 risk signatures that span data protection validation, server OS configuration analysis, cluster configuration validation, HA/DR optimization, as well as heterogeneous platform support.
In addition, RecoverGuard v5.2 now provides support for HP XP storage.
Roughly 18 months ago, Continuity Software made the transition from a direct sales model to an OEM/channel approach. According to Hecht, the shift has resulted in major growth.
“We have ten times the customers today than we did a year ago. The OEM model means less money per individual deal, but it leads to faster adoption of our technology,” said Hecht.
Hecht said Continuity has been profitable for the past four consecutive quarters.
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