The document discusses HotLink DR Express, a disaster recovery solution that replicates virtual machines from an on-premises VMware environment to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. It provides recovery time objectives (RTO) of minutes and recovery point objectives (RPO) configurable from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The solution allows virtual machines to be recovered to AWS cloud infrastructure with minimal data loss in the event of an on-premises failure. It integrates with existing VMware environments and management consoles to configure replication and perform disaster recovery testing without impacting production systems. Pricing is based on actual AWS cloud usage during disaster recovery events rather than requiring dedicated recovery infrastructure.

1. HotLink DR Express 3.0
- DR on AWS -
21/02/2014

2. HotLink DR Express
RTO: Recovery Time Objective
‘How long will it take for the system to be
operational after a disaster?’
- RTO is an agreed target of the maximum time
taken to restore a service – e.g. 8 hours

3. HotLink DR Express
RPO: Recovery Point Objective
‘How much data will I lose?’
- RPO is an agreed target of the maximum
amount of data loss acceptable after a disaster
- Typically specified in hours since the last good
backup

4. Traditional DR Models
Cold Standby – Offsite backup tape storage. Maybe
dedicated replacement hardware/facilities in storage.
[RTO=weeks, RPO=24hrs]. Cheap(ish)
Warm Standby @ Secondary Datacenter –
Dedicated Datacenter, periodic replication of some
data. [RTO=hours/days, RPO=15mins-24hrs]
Expensive but essential for many.
Hot Standby @ Secondary Datacenter – Expensive
real-time replication of data, automated failover.
[RTO<5 mins, RPO=sub-second].Too expensive for
most.

5. DR
- RTO in minutes/VM
- RPO Configurable for each individual VM
- (typically 15 mins to 2 hours)
+ Backup
- Consolidate older Recovery Points to once per
day (configurable). Store up to 500
Snapshots/VM
HotLink DR Express

6. HotLink DR Express – AWS Components
Datacenter Equivalent Amazon AWS Equivalent
vSphere VM - Virtual Machine EC2 - Elastic Cloud Computing
- 1vCPU, 2GB RAM - m1.small
- 1vCPU, 4GB RAM - m1.medium
- 2vCPU, 8GB RAM - m1.large
- 4vCPU, 16GB RAM - m1.xlarge
Primary Storage (SAN) EBS - Elastic Block Storage
Near-Line Storage (disk-based
backup data, archives)
S3 - Simple Storage Service
Internet Firewall ‘Security Groups’
Datacenter LAN VPC – Virtual Private Cloud
WAN ‘Hardware VPN’ (+VPC)
(rough guide for VMWare admins unfamiliar with AWS – AWS capabilities
differ from VMWare and can’t be accurately compared)

7. Hypervisor Host (ESX Server)
Virtual Machines
Primary (SAN) Storage
Near-Line (Backup) Storage
Network Switches
Network Firewall
Internet Connection
Hypervisor Host (ESX Server)
Virtual Machines
Primary (SAN) Storage
Near-Line (Backup) Storage
Network Switches
Network Firewall
Internet Connection
Replication
Replication
Power and Cooling
Rack/Floorspace
Power and Cooling
Rack/Floorspace
DC Management DC Management
Production
Datacenter
DR
Datacenter
Traditional Warm/Hot Standby VMWare DR

8. Production
Datacenter
Hypervisor Host (ESX Server)
Virtual Machines
Primary (SAN) Storage
Near-Line (Backup) Storage
Network Switches
Network Firewall
Internet Connection
AWS Cloud
- BAU
Near-Line (S3) Storage
Network Firewall (VPN)
Replication
Power and Cooling
Rack/Floorspace
DC Management
HotLink DR – Business as Usual state (no disasters)

9. Production
Datacenter
Hypervisor Host (ESX Server)
Virtual Machines
Primary (SAN) Storage
Near-Line (Backup) Storage
Network Switches
Network Firewall
Internet Connection
AWS Cloud
- BAU
Near-Line (S3) Storage
Network Firewall (VPN)
Replication
Power and Cooling
Rack/Floorspace
DC Management
HotLink DR – Business as Usual state (no disasters)
AWS Cloud –
DR Invoked
Virtual Machines (EC2)
Primary (EBS) Storage
Near-Line (S3) Storage
Network Firewall (VPN)

10. How it works – Backups & Replication
HotLink DR Express automatically:
- Clones a VM
- Converts VM from VMWare to AWS EC2 format
- Uploads VM to AWS S3 Storage
- Takes periodic snapshots and uploads changes to
AWS S3
HotLink DR Express

11. How it works – Recovery
HotLink DR Express automatically:
- Moves selected VM Snapshot from S3 to EBS
- Creates EC2 VM
- Powers on EC2 VM with attached storage
- Connects EC2 VM to VPC network and assigns
DHCP IP Address
HotLink DR Express

12. What it looks like – Admin consoles
Protection, replication and recovery all performed
through familiar vCenter console
vCenter plugin shows protection options – can
enable/disable protection and set/modify RPO and
consolidation of snapshots easily per VM
HotLink DR Express

13. HotLink DR Express
What it looks like – Admin consoles
2 additional Datacenters shown in vCenter:
- ‘DR Express’ – shows ‘shadow’ versions of
production VMs. Select a snapshot from here to
recover (using standard snapshot manager menu)
- ‘EC2’ – shows recovered VMs, running on EC2

14. HotLink DR Express
Recovery Features
- Can recover single VM to multiple points in time
- Recovered VMs include their snap timestamp in
their VM name
- All recovered VMs auto-configured for DHCP when
started on EC2 – can modify IP settings after boot.
- Can recover VMs individually, or in batches
- Recover to EC2, or back to your datacenter (after
DR event is over)

15. HotLink DR Express
Whole Datacenter failover
Requires additional planning, additional components:
- Secondary vCenter installation running on AWS

16. AWS VPC – Example Configuration

17. Component Limit Comments
VPCs per region 5
Subnets per VPC 200
Internet gateways per region 5
One per VPC
Virtual private gateways per region 5
One per VPC
Customer gateways per region 50
VPN connections per
region
50 Ten per virtual private
gateway
Route tables per VPC 10 Including the main route table
Entries per route table 20
Elastic IP addresses per region for each AWS account 5 Amazon EC2 has a separate limit for its Elastic IP
addresses per region for each AWS account
Security groups per VPC 100
Rules per security group 50
Security groups you can assign to an instance in a VPC 5
Network ACLs per VPC 50
Rules per network ACL 20
BGP Advertised Routes per VPN Connection 100
AWS VPC Limitations (acceptable)

18. HotLink DR Express
Supported Platforms
Host Platforms
- Amazon EC2 (all regions worldwide)
Guest Operating Systems
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 (RHEL 5.4, 5.6, 5.8)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 (RHEL 6.0, 6.2)
- CentOS versions of these Red Hat releases
- Windows Server 2008 R2 and R2 SP1
- Windows Server 2012
VMware vCenter
- VMware vCenter 5.1
Current Supported Version = vSphere 5.1
[Support for vSphere v5.5 expected very soon (Q1 ‘14)]
Initial replication (seed) of VMs is dependent on Internet Bandwidth at
primary datacentre, could take a while to protect large environments
- Can use Amazon Connect (avail through some ISPs)

19. HotLink DR Express
Cheap – only pay for DR resources when you need them
Reliable AWS infrastructure (including S3 Storage)
Familiar vCenter integration
Unique technology to translate VMWare and EC2 Images
Affordable initial investment – start small (30VMs) and
scale up as required.

20. HotLink DR Express
Unique Capability use case – DR protection in a hurry
“Bob is the CIO of a small/medium enterprise (100 production servers).
Regulatory requirements require a Business Continuity Plan. He has 2 weeks
to install configure and test an IT Disaster Recovery plan before a compliance
Audit”
- Deploy infrastructure in as little as a single day (depending on networking
requirements)
- Initial Seeding performed in batches, can be fully protected within days
(bandwidth dependent)
- This can be reduced with Amazon Web Connect
- Can demonstrate recovery capabilities at any time without impacting
production servers

21. Telephone: +44 20 3326 3900
Fax: +44 20 3326 3910
E-mail: info@virtuoso-uk.com
London Office (HQ)
201 Metropolitan Wharf
70 Wapping Wall
London. E1W 3SS
United Kingdom
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