Veeam Availability Orchestrator

Veeam Software, Inc. announces Availability Orchestrator, a multi-hypervisor DR orchestration engine that enables enterprises to easily execute, test and document DR plans.

Data protection and DR are key areas for improving availability as unplanned IT outages cost the average organization $16 million a year. ⁽¹⁾

“Well-orchestrated and tested DR plans continue to remain one of the primary challenges facing CIOs,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO, Veeam. “While many enterprises have plans in place, they are complex and cumbersome, which means they are often unreliable and difficult to execute, as well as untested and outdated. This puts compliance and enterprise availability at risk. The new Veeam Availability Orchestrator continues our mission to enable enterprises to achieve 24/7/365 availability. It enables modern SLAs for data and application recovery to be met, reduces costs, increases reliability by eliminating manual processes, all while satisfying compliance requirements.“

According to Gartner, by the end of 2017, 60% of large enterprises will have transitioned from a sole dependence on traditional DR management to a broader use of IT service continuity management. In the evolving digital business era, the criticality of recovery time and recovery point service levels is becoming subordinate to support for sustainable IT service continuity. ⁽²⁾

Availability Orchestrator provides orchestration of Veeam backups and replicas through a defined DR plan, non-disruptive testing, automated documenting, updating and reporting. This combination of capabilities helps enterprise customers to ensure data and application availability, maintain reliability, reduce costs of manual processes, and satisfy compliance requirements.

The Availability Orchestrator solves current issues with DR plans by providing enterprises with a multi-hypervisor DR orchestration engine for firm’s Availability Suite and Backup & Replication.

Built specifically for enterprise, this solution from company
provides the following capabilities:

• Orchestration: Thorough coordination of Veeam backups and replicas through a defined DR plan;

• Automated DR testing: Automatic and non-disruptive testing to maintain reliability and avoid expensive manual processes; and

• Compliance and documentaion: Built-in documenting, updating and reporting of DR plans to satisfy compliance requirements.

Available later this year, Availability Orchestrator is designed to work with Availability Suite and Backup & Replication, and licensed per VM. Customers are required to own an Enterprise Plus license for either Availability Suite or Backup & Replication.

“Good partners make efforts to align corporate needs with technology strategies,” said Pete Carufe, Sr. director, commercial enterprise, SHI International Corp., a Veeam Platinum ProPartner. “Our mission is to help our customers’ achieve their mission by getting the right technology to the right people at the right time. Partnering with Veeam enables us to solve the challenges that our enterprise customers face in enabling access to all data and applications 24/7/365. Veeam’s new availability solutions for the enterprise are catapulting them into a leading solution partner for us.“

“CDW shares the commitment of Veeam to enable enterprises to be always-on,” said Matt Troka, SVP, product and partner management, CDW Corporation, a Platinum Veeam ProPartner. “As our customers are consistently challenged with the demands of the modern data center, our strong partner relationship with Veeam is key to our ability to consistently and effectively present solutions that solve our customer’s availability needs, beyond just backup.“

“As part of my role at CBRE, my team is tasked with ensuring that the business is Always-On but, even at the best of times an outage could come out of nowhere,” said Darren Warner, regional director, infrastructure and operations for AsiaPac, CBRE Group, Inc., a Veeam customer. “In my mind, VAO takes the pain out of orchestrating and maintaining near-constant availability for my organisation and the automated documentation and reporting functions provides proof of the viability of our DR strategy.“

London Gatwick Airport is the UK’s second largest airport and the busiest and most efficient single-runway airport in the world. It serves more than 220 destinations in 90 countries for more than 39 million passengers each year. An aircraft takes off or lands nearly every minute during peak times at Gatwick Airport.

“The best way to support airport operations is with a redundant, resilient and robust IT infrastructure,” said Sherif Darwish, head, IT infrastructure, Gatwick Airport. “Veeam proved its value for us when we lost a configuration server that allowed us to operate a major airport control system. The service wasn’t down, but without a quick VM recovery, this situation could have been operationally problematic. With Veeam, we restored the VM in a matter of minutes. We don’t take recovery lightly. We absolutely have to be able to recover from a backup to maintain a resilient stance.“

“Veeam not only gave us a way to protect our intellectual property, but also a way to maintain the integrity of our data,” said Andre Bromes, SVP and CIO, Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey, Inc. “With Veeam we get the most out of backup, recovery and replication. Veeam transformed IT for us, helping us move from a DR plan to a BC plan.“

⁽¹⁾ Veeam Availability Report, 2016
⁽²⁾ Hype Cycle for IT Service Continuity Management, 2015; Gartner research. Analyst(s): John P Morency, Pushan Rinnen, Carl Claunch; Published 28 July 2015.