Storage array giants can use Azure to evacuate their back ends

Azure is now helping SAN owners to move snapshots captured on devices provided by EMC, NetApp, HP and Hitachi Data Systems. Microsoft already offers share 'n' sync for virtual machines under the “Azure Site Recovery” (ASR) service. At TechEd in Barcelona this week, Microsoft revealed ASR will soon gain the ability to hook …

[Pascal Monett]

"planned failover that guarantees zero data loss"

OK, I'm stocking up on the popcorn for when this egg blows up in their face.

[Velv]

Re: "planned failover that guarantees zero data loss"

If it's properly planned then there's no reason to have data loss.

Microsoft can guarantee their part, what the user fucks up remains the users problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the premise of the article is incorrect - I believe that the press release is saying that ASR can be used to co-ordinate the replication of VMs based on SAN storage, but the SAN storage must still be replicating between SANs directly. The SAN data is not being replicated to Azure, just the VM snapshotting metadata.

I may of course be completely wrong.

[Lusty]

Thanks AC, that makes much more sense. I was wondering how it sucked the data out of a NetApp to send to the cloud without being insanely inefficient. Even using the new NetApp in the cloud I couldn't work out how I'd get the VMs to boot on Azure since they wouldn't be on bootable storage. With your comment though, this now reads as MS released a reasonably priced SRM killer which works with cloud too :)

[hectoralinares]

[Full disclosure - Microsoft employee. I work in the System Center team]

Lusty, Anonymous,

You are both correct. ASR integrates with SAN devices from HP, EMC, Netapp and other storage vendors to coordinate the failover of their storage between sites. Customers familiar with VMware use SRM in the same way. ASR protects virtual workloads running on Hyper-V connected to SAN on-premises.

The TechEd session is available here for more details: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2014/CDP-B339

[Trevor_Pott]

Well done, Microsoft!

An excellent feature, aimed at the right target market. Enterprises will benefit from this.