Data center disaster recovery

Unisys updates server with six-core Intel Xeon, enhances services

Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. announced its new ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server using Intel Xeon six-core processors (Dunnington), which Intel also announced today; along with new business assurance services and software in the Unisys Infrastructure Management Suite.

Unisys’ new ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server is based on the new six-core Intel Xeon processor 7400 series. It has 16 sockets providing up to 96 processor cores. According to Unisys, the 7600R is designed for database and online transaction processing environments, large-scale consolidation and virtualization initiatives and business intelligence deployments with Microsoft SQL Server.

Model 7600R can support consolidation of 64 SQL Server databases into a single four-socket, six-core Xeon processor configuration – with 24 total processor cores – which Unisys claims is better than a commodity server farm of 64 dual-socket, single-core Xeon processor servers with 128 total processor cores, while using less disk and providing better response times.

The new server also supports VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Hyper-V, and supports dynamic partitioning so users can add more processor, memory and I/O resources on the fly without disrupting system operations. Unisys plans to introduce secure partitioning in the first half of 2009, which provides partitioning capabilities at the processor core level.

Prices for the ES7000 Model 7600R range from $26,430 to $135,000. Unisys will exhibit the ES7000 Model 7600R at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas, Sept. 15-18.

Unisys business services
Unisys also announced new Business Assurance Services that help companies evaluate the cost and benefits of disaster recovery products, reduce the time it takes to deploy the best ones and reduce operational costs by improving resource utilization.

“We are vendor-agnostic and will implement whichever technology is best for the client. It could be a Unisys product, or it could be from another vendor,” said Jody Little, vice president of solutions and services at Unisys.

The Unisys Business Assurance Services, using discovery processes and tools developed with support from Unisys partner GlassHouse Technologies, include the following:

• Unisys Disaster Recovery Architecture Service, which provides a methodology to build application and data disaster recovery capabilities.
• Unisys Backup Modernization Service, which helps clients select new technologies and services to support backup environments at both core and remote sites.
• Unisys Data Protection for Backup Service, which helps clients improve backup and restore operations for business information, reducing costs by improving utilization of assets. Unisys experts also make vendor-independent recommendations and create a prioritized action plan

Unisys has also added new management software components to its Infrastructure Management Suite, which automates and orchestrates management of a real-time IT infrastructure. More information can be found on the Unisys website.

How Microsoft’s licensing change does (or doesn’t) affect disaster recovery

Microsoft’s announcement of licensing changes on 41 of its server software products was a welcome change for users (and analysts) alike, although as reporter Bridget Botelho wrote, the virtualization licensing policy comes with a catch.

As it turns out, the change may or may not have an effect on your company’s disaster recovery testing. This morning Richard Jones from Burton Group wrote about the licensing change’s effect on disaster recovery. The answer? It depends.

Let’s first take a look at what the licensing situation was before the Microsoft announcement this week. From Jones:

Prior to the revisions, a user could not transfer an application license to another physical server more often than once every 90 days. Legally, this didn’t allow for disaster recovery testing with only one license for your application instance, nor for any type of disaster event that would result in failing a service over to a recovery site for less than 90 days. You would need to either stay at your failover site for 90 days minimum, or you would need to purchase additional licenses for your recovery sites, even though they would not be in use except during a disaster event or testing.

So then the announcement changes all that, right? Now you can be fearless in your disaster recovery testing, knowing that Microsoft isn’t going to punish you for transferring licenses from one data center to another, right? Well, not quite.

Microsoft’s press release on the licensing changes doesn’t go into sufficient detail. But when looking for further documentation, there is this Microsoft Word document on the so-called Application Server License Mobility. According to the document, the change “allows you to freely move both licenses and running instances within a server farm from one server to another.” It then defines a “server farm:”

A server farm consists of up to two data centers each physically located in the following areas:

• In a time zone that is within four hours of the local time zone of the other (Coordinated Universal Time [UTC] and not DST), and/or
• Within the European Union (EU) and/or European Free Trade Association (EFTA)

Each data center may be part of only one server farm. You may reassign a data center from one server farm to another, but not on a short-term basis (that is, not within 90 days of the last assignment).

Why does this definition, and in particular the bullet point about four time zones, matter? Jones writes:

For those who have disaster recovery centers within four time zones of your production data center, you now only need one license per covered Microsoft server application instance. This can translate into savings in your business continuity plan. However, those of you who have off-shored – or are looking to off-shore – your disaster recovery solution, you may not be able to reap the benefits of this licensing revision. You will want to take this into account when calculating your potential savings by off-shoring – it may change your plans.