This weeks vendorwag has been in the making for sometime – so I was able to fit into my schedule despite my recent haitus. Despite which I didn’t want to keep the VirtualSharp guys hanging on waiting for me to get my virtual butt back in the saddle. I first came across VirtualSharp at the Leeds VMUG in the Spring – and was very intrigued by them. There product covers the world of DR automation for virtual machines – so I guess you can see why I was interested in them given my background with VMware SRM.

My wag was with Phil Maynard who is the Senior Director, Product Marketing. I asked Phil range of questions about their ReliableDR product including:

Q1. A lot of customers don’t think they need software to automate their DR recovery process for virtual infrastructure. They say they can do it all themselves via PowerCLI scripting – Why are they wrong?

Q2. One of the main USPs seems to me your service orientated approach. How do you detect my service have started correctly & are functioning.

Q3. Can your product keep a history of known-good tests, and roll-back a live environment by factors of hours, or days… How does that work?

Q4. What special requirements are needed at the Protected & Recovery Site?

Q5. Do you physical to virtual conversion – what software do I need to get this working…

Q6. You develop your own “Storage Adapters” to speak the array vendors. What advantages does this development model give you?

Q7. VirtualSharp can work within a single-site. What’s the usage case for doing this?

Q8. In v2.5 you released your own Host Based Replication. How does this differ from SAN Replication?

Q9. Do you automate failback? If not, why not – What future functionality to do think virtualsharp possessing.

As ever if you want the MP3 version of the chinwag it’s here – but to be honest it’s much easier to subscribe to the MP3 podcast via iTunes which means the podcast will be download when ever I do them. Alternatively, if you would prefer the videos on your iPAD/iPOD/iPhone – you subscribe to the video version of the Chinwags there (beware they are big!). If you don’t use iTunes, here’s the generic RSS Feed link

If you want to see the video in hi-resolution and full density – you can open it here.

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