VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery - Architecture Basics
VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery provides an easy to use, cost-effective, cloud-based, DR solution built along with the VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS platform.
What is VMware Cloud DR?
This DR as a Service (DRaaS) solution has 3 main components that make up the overall architecture. They are:
- Protected Sites - and the policies that provide the coverage of your production workloads whether they are in on-premises data center locations or running in other VMC SDDCs
- Scale-out Cloud File System (SCFS) - that provides the immutable, off-site recovery points for effecting the desired site failover, managed by a separate Orchestrator UI running as a service in VMware Cloud
- VMC Recovery SDDC - the DR site in the cloud - for running workloads when the Protected Site has experienced a disaster
The figure below shows the basic relationship of these components to the overall VMware Cloud DR solution.
To better understand the key architectural aspects of this DRaaS (DR as a Service) approach, let's explore how they fit together in a bit more detail in this Light Board Video - What is VMware Cloud DR?.
Now that you have the context for the VMware Cloud DR elements, let's look at each of these pieces on their own.
Protected Sites
The Protection Group (PG) policy driven approach to protecting virtualized workloads in each site protected with VMware Cloud DR is covered in this Light Board Video - VMware Cloud DR Protection Group Policies explanation.
Scale-out Cloud File System (SCFS)
This component of VMware Cloud DR is critical for the safe keeping of the recovery points that will help your organization get back into service in the event of a disaster striking one of your protected sites. We cover some of the basics of the SCFS in this Light Board Video - VMware Cloud DR SCFS. There is more detail on the value of this particular component of the solution when addressing the challenges of ransomware.
VMC on AWS SDDCs
In this Light Board Video - VMC SDDC Options with VMware Cloud DR, we explore the options for deploying a cloud-based DR site for receiving the VM workloads in the event of a disaster in your production datacenter. You can find more deployment option considerations and details on this topic in this blog on Managing Your DR Recovery SDDC Deployment Method.
Putting it all together
Now that you have a high-level overview of the key components in VMware Cloud DR, you can dive deeper with more resources available below: