PlateSpin Unveils Break-Through Disaster Recovery Alternative Based on Infrastructure Virtualization

November 7, 2006; 05:42 AM
PlateSpin Ltd. today announced enhanced versions of its best-in-class data center automation and optimization software. PowerConvert 6.5 and PowerRecon 2.5 work together to build, test and implement disaster recovery plans that leverage physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion technology. The introduction of this breakthrough product functionality represents a strategic response to growing interest in disaster recovery as a high-value application of virtualization technology. The latest product releases contain features that will transform the way data centers approach disaster recovery planning for the wide array of server assets that are commonly left under-protected or over-protected. PlateSpin launched the new products at VMworld 2006, VMware’s premier virtualization event attended by over 5,000 IT professionals, developers and managers.

“Data centers have historically allocated the lion’s share of the disaster recovery budget to only the most critical server assets, leaving hundreds of servers under-protected,” said Stephen Pollack, PlateSpin founder and CEO. “More than 2000 PlateSpin customers now have an affordable disaster recovery alternative that provides RTO and RPO that approaches high-end clustering schemes at a fraction of the cost.”

"In a Forrester Survey, respondents stated that 23% were already using server virtualization to assist in some way with business continuity and disaster recovery, and 19% thought it was very suitable for doing so," writes Galen Schreck and Frank E. Gillett in the June 2006 report entitled Pragmatic Approaches To Server Virtualization. "Other users we've spoken to like the idea that they don't have to have identical hardware and server counts at the backup site, reducing the need for idle duplicate hardware."

About PowerConvert and PowerRecon

PlateSpin PowerConvert is a software solution that streams servers between physical hardware, blade infrastructures, virtual machines and image archives over the network. PlateSpin PowerRecon is agentless software that measures, analyses and determines the optimal fit between server resource supply and workload demand. Together, PowerConvert and PowerRecon form the world’s first and only end-to-end continuous server consolidation and disaster recovery solutions leveraging virtualization technologies.

New Features of PowerRecon and PowerConvert

• Create disaster recovery plans that match workloads and resources to create an optimal virtual recovery environment using PowerRecon.
• Seamlessly transfer plans from PowerRecon to PowerConvert for automated implementation of a complete end-to-end optimized DR strategy.
• PowerConvert’s new incremental transfer functionality enables customers to perform an initial full system replication of a physical production server into a virtual recovery environment, and then propagate changes at user-defined intervals to maintain synchronicity between production and recovery environments.
• Built-in recovery “Fire Drills” that leverage the features of virtualization, enable customers to efficiently test disaster recovery scenarios to ensure DR plan integrity.
• Consolidated recovery environments based on virtual infrastructure eliminate the need to purchase and maintain redundant hardware and multiple operating system licenses.
• Virtual-to-physical conversions make it possible for customers to rapidly migrate a virtual recovery server back onto any physical hardware platform once the original platform failure has been repaired.
• Integration with 3rd party data replication tools also allows for effective restoration of more mission critical servers in ways not previously possible.

Dell, a market share leader in server shipments, is a reseller and user of PlateSpin’s continuous server consolidation solution and plans to offer customers P2V Recovery. "Dell has made significant investments in virtualization solutions that are easy to deploy so that customers can drive the technology across their datacenter," said Judy Chavis, Director, Dell Product Group at Dell. "We work with PlateSpin because they share our vision of driving industry standards with a technology that will help customers consolidate their infrastructure, achieve better utilization and implement flexible disaster recovery solutions.”

Visit PlateSpin and Its Partners at VMworld

PlateSpin will be exhibiting at VMworld 2006, November 7-9 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in booth 635. Visit the PlateSpin booth for product demonstrations and learn about disaster recovery using VMware and how to consolidate servers in 60 minutes. Join John Stetic, PlateSpin’s Director of Product Management, at the Building Business Continuity breakout sessions on Tuesday, November 7, 15:15-16:15. PlateSpin CEO Stephen Pollack will also be on hand to share his vision of the future of virtualization, together with emerging data center best practices.

About PlateSpin

PlateSpin provides the most advanced data center automation software designed to optimize the use of server resources across the enterprise to improve business service levels and lower costs. PlateSpin’s patent-pending OS Portability™ technology liberates software from hardware platforms, allowing servers to be streamed over the enterprise network from any source to any destination. This freedom of movement ensures the best fit between server resource supply and application workload demands.

Global 2000 companies use PlateSpin solutions to lower costs and solve today’s most pressing data center initiatives, such as server consolidation, disaster recovery, hardware migration and test lab automation. Recently awarded the 2006 International Business Award for Best Company, PlateSpin also ranked fourth on the seventh annual PROFIT HOT 50 for emerging growth companies. Additionally, Branham Group named PlateSpin as the fourth fastest growing IT company in Canada and as one of the top five Movers and Shakers in the Canadian IT Sector for 2006. For more information, please visit www.platespin.com.