Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Friday, March 29, 2024

RackWare Adds Disaster Recovery To Cloud Management 

RackWare, the five-year-old cloud management startup, has rolled out the third version of its disaster recovery module designed to move existing IT infrastructure to the cloud with minimum hassle.

RackWare Management Module, or RMM 3.0, aims to reduce the cost of disaster recovery in enterprise datacenters while extending IT resources into the cloud. That allows enterprises to leverage private, public and hybrid cloud environments without having to change operating systems or applications. The new version of RMM includes server software with management capabilities that includes disaster recovery.

New functionality added to the latest version of RMM, which was last updated in 2012, includes cloning of production servers to replicate operating systems, applications, and data stored on production servers into cloud recovery instances.

Also included in the upgrade is an "incremental synchronization" feature that synchs changes in the operating system, applications, and data from production servers. All are synchronized to the recovery instances as production instances change. RackWare added that only differences are transmitted, thereby saving bandwidth and datacenter resources.

In the event of a production system failure, RackWare said the recovery instance is synchronized and automatically takes over workload processing. Once the production server is restored, the recovery instance synchronizes changes that occurred during the outage back to the production server.

RackWare emerged from stealth mode in late 2010 with the introduction of the first version of RMM. The startup was initially funded by LSI Storage until LSI was acquired by NetApp in 2011. At the point, RMM intellectual property was transferred to RackWare. The company has so far raised $5.3 million in two funding rounds, including $2.3 million earlier this year, according to CEO and co-founder Sash Sunkara.

Investors include Osage Venture Partners and the Kickstart Seed Fund.

Sunkara argues that disaster recovery options have been largely limited to complex, expensive solutions or slow tape backup recovery. RackWare's pitch is that an automated system can bring systems back online faster at lower cost. The company claims its automated approach to infrastructure management and disaster recovery can cut operating expenses by as much as 50 percent.

Earlier this year, the Silicon Valley company announced a partnership with IBM's SoftLayer enterprise cloud unit that extends to managing enterprise workloads and disaster recovery. The partnership allows RMM to be used by enterprise clients to extend their datacenters into SoftLayer's cloud infrastructure-as-a-service, the partners said.

Among RackWare's more than 200 customers are Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Coca-Cola, Macy's, and Hallmark. Along with SoftLayer, RackWare's cloud partners include CenturyLink and Sungard.

The company said RMM 3.0 has been available to a limited number of customers over the last nine months. General availability of the update starts on July 28 for customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, India, and Japan.

About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

EnterpriseAI