JetStream DR for Microsoft Azure VMware Solution Available With Azure Blob Storage

JetStream Software Inc. announced the availability of its DR software, JetStream DR, which will support Microsoft Azure VMware solution.

The company will integrate its offerings with Microsoft Corp. to deliver DR capabilities for Azure VMware Solution, employing JetStream DR software along with Azure Blob Storage.

Microsoft announced its collaboration with the company during this year’s virtual Microsoft Ignite and VMworld 2020 conferences. Now, the firm’s DR software is available for Azure VMware Solution customers and can be accessed through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

The firm’s DR can be used to protect VMware VMs in the customer’s on-premises data center with failover and VM recovery in Azure VMware Solution. Additionally, VMware VMs already deployed to and running in Azure VMware Solution can be protected with VM failover and recovery to an alternate Azure VMware Solution data center.

Because the protected VMs’ data is maintained entirely in Azure Blob Storage during normal operation, customers realize the benefits of CDP in a DRaaS offering with lower infrastructure costs. The combination of Azure Blob Storage, Azure VMware Solution, and the company software’s VMware-certified software transforms the economics of DR for the enterprise.

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“Collaborating with Microsoft Azure enables us to provide a robust and cost-effective solution for DR and BC,” said Tom Critser, co-founder and CEO, JetStream. “It’s an ideal combination: The JetStream DR software brings CDP to enterprise VMware environments; Azure Blob Storage provides a cost-effective means of maintaining recovery assets; and Azure VMware Solution provides a highly available, reliable VMware on Azure environment that can scale to meet customers’ recovery and failover requirements.“

“Microsoft Azure collaborates with third-party data protection vendors in the VMware ecosystem with the objective of offering our customers greater choice in how they employ the Azure VMware Solution for backup and DR,” said Eric Lockard, corporate VP, Azure dedicated. “JetStream DR’s use of cost-effective Azure Blob resources for ongoing storage, combined with the ability to expand VMware recovery resources on demand, introduces an exciting new model for DR.”

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Enterprise IT shifts to cloud
Despite the current economic downturn, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure is the one sector in the IT market that is seeing increased demand. Gartner forecasts overall IT spending in 2020 to decline by 5.4% ($207.6 billion) vs. 2019,⁽¹⁾ but it projects that surging cloud adoption in 2020 will drive an 18.4% increase in end-user spending for public cloud services in 2021. ⁽²⁾

Under pressure to ‘do more with less,’ sectors such as financial services, manufacturing, transportation and retail are accelerating their planned move of IT operations and services to the cloud for flexibility and cost-efficiency. Demand for DR delivered as a cloud-based service is growing rapidly as public cloud technology and the service provider ecosystem have matured, enabling enterprise-grade BC and DR (BCDR) capabilities with the efficiency of cloud multi-tenancy and economies of scale.

Cloud-native DR services have become more essential in today’s environment as new threat vectors have magnified risk. With the massive, sudden shift to remote work due to Covid-19, there is heightened sensitivity around security worldwide ⁽³⁾. Effective BCDR strategies and operating plans enable organizations to maintain or resume functions as rapidly as possible, while safeguarding valuable data.

How does JetStream DR for Azure VMware solution work?
The company’s DR provides CDP for vSphere environments. The cloud-native software platform is designed to provide the software infrastructure for a DR service offering for the enterprise or from a MSP and CSP.

JetStream DR is validated for Azure VMware Solution and is VMware-Ready, offering capabilities among DR solutions, including:

Cost-effective DR: Maintains VMs and their data in Azure Blob Storage, enabling enterprise-grade DR at a lower cost of operation.
Agentless CDP: Captures and replicates data continuously via VMware IO Filters for CDP without VM agents.
vSphere to vSphere recovery: Supports Azure VMware solution, so customers no longer need to maintain a failover site. They can failover to Azure VMware Solution and failback as needed when the original protected data center is restored.
Storage-independent: Protects VMs in all VMware-compatible datastore types: block, file, vSAN, VVOL and third-party HCI.
Live failback: Returns VMs to the protected site from Azure VMware Solution without interruption to VMs’ operation or protection.
Decoupled design: Azure Blob Storage is more than just a journal or ‘cold data tier’ – it is the sole repository for all VMs, data, configuration metAdata: and recovery policies.

Availability and specs:

JetStream DR is available for technology preview, with availability in early 2021.
License subscription pricing is based on the number of VMs protected. Participants will need an Azure Blob Storage subscription and a vSphere cluster in Azure VMware Solution in order to perform a full evaluation.
JetStream DR can protect environments running vSphere 6.5 and 6.7. Within Azure VMware Solution, VMs currently run vSphere 6.7.

(1) Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 4% in 2021, October 20, 2020,
⁽²⁾ Gartner Press Release, Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Grow 18% in 2021, November 17, 2020,
⁽³⁾ Interpol, Interpol report shows alarming rate of cyberattacks during Covid-19, August 4, 2020,