The new operating system (OS) requirements mean we will see even more instances of vCenter as a VM (virtual machine).

VMware needs feedback from SRM (Site Recovery Manager) customers. The SRM product team is asking that customers take a 15 minute survey about their deployments. In return, the first 1000 to participate will receive a free PDF copy of Mike Laverick’s SRM 4.0 book, and VMware will donate $10 to charity. Laverick indicated in an email the chosen charity is UNICEF.

The question of whether or not to do synchronous or asynchronous replication between storage arrays does not come up often but I suspect it will as more and more people expand their business continuity infrastructure. It’s an important question because it can have a serious impact on the production environment.

Virtualization is seen as the technology that makes it possible to do more with less, but there are many pitfalls to consider when virtualizing server infrastructure. This article suggests planning decisions to be considered that, if overlooked, could ruin the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the return on on investment (ROI) expected from this virtual infrastructure.

The mainstream media is still digesting the Oscar awards, but we in storage had our own announcement this week: TechTarget’s (now non-PDF?) Storage magazine announced their Storage Products of the Year award for 2008. Without further ado, the awards and my reaction!

What are the challenges that SRM tools face? Is the problem one of scale and complexity? If you look at what we expect the SRM tool to do, we expect currently expect it to understand our storage environment end-to-end. So look at what an SRM tool needs to do.

VMware SRM software is just the last piece of the total data center recovery “machine”. Many organizations may be seeking the semblance of automated site fail over, but have they really considered in detail what it takes to start up their business critical systems at a secondary location?