PlateSpin Forge Protects the Data Center with Improved Workload Integrity and Flexible Storage Options

PlateSpin ULC, a Novell® company, today announced the availability of PlateSpin Forge version 2.0, an innovative hardware-based disaster recovery appliance that uses embedded VMware virtualization to protect most x86 server workloads. The only product on the market to provide immediate failover and hardware-independent failback, PlateSpin Forge allows customers to rapidly recover their server workloads in the event of downtime or a site disaster. Additionally, this latest release integrates with existing SAN infrastructures to enable customers to leverage their high-volume storage investments to protect the growing number and size of workloads in today's data centers. PlateSpin Forge now also provides multiple recovery points to increase the flexibility of how lost workloads are recovered and offers efficient workload migration over a WAN to a remote recovery location to reduce downtime in the event of site disaster.

"It is clear that customers are looking beyond server consolidation to find new ways to leverage virtualization in their enterprise," said John Humphreys, program vice president at IDC. "As business continuity and disaster recovery become key areas of focus for customers making purchasing decisions around virtualization, they are looking to virtualization management players like PlateSpin who are extending virtualization's benefits to the next level with innovative solutions for managing and protecting the data center."

With the ability to rapidly recover a workload and failback to the same or different hardware, PlateSpin Forge reduces downtime and helps customers get back up and running quickly. Designed to protect between 10 and 25 workloads, PlateSpin Forge ships with all storage, management software and VMware virtualization pre-packaged, dramatically reducing implementation time and effort. The newest version also includes support for 64-bit Windows* workloads, giving customers the ability to protect their Windows workloads for both greater operating efficiency and return on their existing investments in the data center. For larger enterprise implementations, PlateSpin Forge also includes a central management console to streamline the management of multiple PlateSpin Forge appliances.

"With embedded VMware virtualization at the core of the PlateSpin Forge recovery appliance, organizations of all sizes can benefit from a simplified disaster recovery solution for protecting physical and virtual workloads in the data center," said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances at VMware. "We are excited to see PlateSpin bring innovative new products to market that help customers build the always-on virtual datacenter, thereby enhancing and extending the value proposition of using best-in-class VMware virtualization technology."

The latest PlateSpin Forge release offers a range of appliance models to help customers better match their recovery investment with the size and configuration of their data center and the number of workloads they need to protect. Customers have the flexibility to purchase a 10 workload recovery appliance and then purchase additional protection to a maximum of 25 workloads. Organizations can also choose appliance models with local storage or opt to leverage existing SAN storage for the recovery environment.

"Customers large and small are increasingly leveraging SAN infrastructures for flexible and scalable high volume storage," said Stephen Pollack, vice president of Business Strategy for Novell Systems and Resource Management. "As a result, customers are also looking for solutions that help them to cost-effectively protect their systems across the SAN. With an intelligent management console for managing workload protection and SAN-to-SAN replication, PlateSpin Forge allows enterprises to tap into virtualization to protect all workloads running across their organization."