VMware ties disaster recovery to vSphere

VMware’s Site Recovery Manager now supports vSphere, eliminating one of the obstacles preventing customers from updating to the latest version of VMware’s virtualization platform.

vSphere 4, the succesor to ESX 3.5, was unveiled in April ’09 but until now did not work with Site Recovery Manager, VMware’s software for recovering virtual machines in case of disaster.

VMware has now released SRM version 4, with support for vSphere and other upgrades including a “many-to-one failover (that) protects multiple production sites with automatic failover into a single, shared recovery site.”

Because SRM did not immediately support vSphere, numerous customers have delayed upgrades from 3.5, acknoledges John Bock, productmarketing manager for VMware’s server business unit.