by Joe Gleinser
15. August 2009 07:15
The Xilocore offsite backup solution came recommended from another VAR out of state. When I saw them at the CompTIA Breakaway Summit I made a point to spend some time at the booth. If you're not familar with Xilocore, it serves the same purpose as an offsite SAN replication of VMs and data without needing the offsite SAN, servers, data center, firewall, bandwidth, etc. An onsite appliance is installed that makes a local backup and then replicates the data offsite. In the event of a server failure you can run the VM on the Xilcore box locally. If a more serious or prolonged outage occurs, Xilocore can stand up your VMs at their data center and provide Citrix-based access to those servers. Turnaround times are offered at 24 and 48 hour intervals.
I looked at this solution in comparison to a proposal I was working on that featured offsite SAN replication with offsite server hardware for DR. This was a Hyper-V platform with System Center Management Suite (including DPM). Xilocore had a compelling offer but this client already had collocation, an MPLS WAN and gobs of spare hardware coming after the virtualization project completes. Though not a fit for this client, I'll circle back and investigate more on upcoming opportunities. I'll be sure to post the outcome.