SOFTBANK TELECOM and Xsigo Demonstrate Virtual Machine Disaster Recovery

Xsigo Systems, Inc., in data center I/O virtualization, and SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp., the fixed-line telecommunications segment of SOFTBANK group and one of Japan’s largest telecommunication firms, announced that the companies have demonstrated an automated disaster recovery solution that allows VMware virtual machines to be automatically failed over between sites which are over 500 KM apart. Built on a Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure, the solution dramatically accelerates system recovery times, reduces the need for manual intervention, and minimizes business loss due to system downtime.

The demonstration included the automatic transfer of a complete system environment to another data center and rapid recovery from a system failure, enabled by a Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure consisting of Xsigo VP780 I/O Directors and wide area SONET technology. The solution successfully transferred both the virtual machine environment and the virtual storage environment quickly and automatically between SOFTBANK TELECOM data centers in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan.

While redundant systems are essential for mission critical applications, the cost of creating and maintaining comprehensive disaster recovery systems remains a hurdle. Furthermore, the data recovery process remains a complex, manual procedure that may take days to complete. By virtualizing server I/O, the Xsigo I/O Director delivers a flexible server I/O infrastructure, with remote management and clustering capabilities that simplify and accelerate long-distance disaster recovery.

"Our customers know the complexity of recovering systems in a virtual machine environment. Using today’s technologies, disaster recovery requires skilled engineers on-site, and may take anywhere from a few hours to several days," said Takeshi Hashimoto, senior research engineer of SOFTBANK TELECOM Laboratories. "With Xsigo virtual I/O, we demonstrated that failover can be rapid, automated, and managed remotely, capabilities that have been difficult to achieve with existing solutions."

The solution demonstrated these industry firsts:

1) Recovery automation for virtual machines
By automating virtual machine failover among sites, the solution accelerated recovery times and nearly eliminated the need for manual intervention. Furthermore, during partial system failure, such as the failure of a specific server, storage or network device, available spare systems at the remote site were used to minimize performance impact.

2) Server I/O across Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure
The demonstration showed that server I/O using Xsigo virtual I/O technology can be interconnected across multiple data centers separated by lengthy distances. In the past, server I/O technologies were used solely within data centers. Extending the server I/O enabled seamless server and storage connectivity among physically distant locations to simplify virtual machine management across sites.

"We are thrilled to work with SOFTBANK TELECOM and Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation, our Japanese distributor, to demonstrate this groundbreaking advancement," said Ashok Krishnamurthi, executive chairman of Xsigo. "By combining server virtualization and I/O virtualization to deliver long-distance disaster recovery, we demonstrated an important new capability for enterprise-wide virtual machine deployments."

The Xsigo VP780 I/O Director is distributed in Japan through Xsigo Systems’ partner, Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation (SCS). SCS provided the technical assistance necessary to complete this demonstration successfully.

"Virtualized servers are increasingly deployed in mission-critical applications that require continuous uptime," said Yoshikazu Tanaka, country manager of Xsigo Systems K.K. "I am delighted that the Xsigo I/O Director VP780 played a central role in implementing SOFTBANK TELECOM’s Wide Area Virtualization Infrastructure to help provide faster, more easily managed disaster recovery solutions for virtual servers."

SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.

Xsigo Systems, Inc.