Given the various data protection requirements that customers might have for their virtualized workloads, VxRail provides several data protection options to ensure that the appropriate protection level is available. The following figure organizes the data protection options according to the service-level objective that needs to be met, from continuous availability to archive.

Figure 28.    Data protection options for every protection level of need

A vSAN Stretched Cluster is a native vSAN software feature that provides customers with site-level protection with zero data loss and near instantaneous recovery. This setup has automated failover in case of site failures. For customers looking for disaster avoidance and zero recovery point objective (RPO), stretched clusters are the appropriate data protection option. VxRail LCM features support stretched cluster deployments. For more information, see the Dell VxRail 7.0 vSAN Stretched Cluster Planning Guide.

Dell RecoverPoint for VMs provides a flexible replication solution for virtual workloads running on VxRail clusters. It can provide synchronous replication between sites to mitigate site loss events. With its point-in-time and asynchronous, local replication capability, replicated copies or snapshots can be repurposed for test/development, operational recovery, and short-term backup and long-term backup use cases. RecoverPoint for VMs is managed directly from vCenter Server. It is storage agnostic so that VMs on VxRail clusters can be replicated to other storage options including cloud service providers for cloud disaster recovery solutions.

VMware vSphere Replication is a hypervisor-based, asynchronous replication for VMs. It is fully integrated with vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client. vSphere Replication can provide local data protection and can be an appropriate disaster recovery solution between sites for environments that can tolerate some data loss. vSphere Replication can be combined with VMware Site Recovery Manager to deliver automated failover and failback to minimize downtime.

Local backup and recovery solutions include Dell PowerProtect software and Dell Data Domain Virtual Edition (VE), with PowerProtect appliance or Dell Integrated Data Protection Appliance as backup repositories. The PowerProtect software provides comprehensive backup and point-in-time recovery. Data Domain VE can be deployed on a VxRail cluster for a consolidated environment. The PowerProtect appliance and Integration Data Protection Appliance are purpose-built data protection appliances designed as backup targets for environments in which capacity and balanced performance are priorities.

Cloud replication, backup, and archive options are also available with VxRail clusters. RecoverPoint for VMs can replicate VMs to VMware Multi-Cloud solutions deployed on AWS for a hybrid cloud site recovery solution. RecoverPoint for VMs and PowerProtect can also replicate and copy backups to AWS S3 for more cost-efficient backup or archive solutions.