The shift from physical servers to consolidated, virtualized server infrastructures has had undeniable IT benefits. However, the rapid move to VMware has caused traditional approaches to disaster recovery (DR) to become outmoded and added a layer of complexity to DR implementation. DR for VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) requires that all your VMs (virtual machines) be regularly replicated to a remote site, consuming significant storage and network bandwidth. By using NetApp deduplication on your primary VMware storage systems, you can substantially reduce the amount of data in your primary storage environment.

This reduction results in a cascading benefit to your downstream infrastructure, reducing the bandwidth necessary for replication and the storage necessary at the DR site. The cost savings created by using deduplication can make DR feasible in situations in which it may have otherwise been cost prohibitive. For instance, one customer reported that after deduplicating his VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment, the storage and bandwidth needed to provide DR for his desktops was relatively minor and made adding DR feasible for his VDI environment as well as his VI3 environment.

This article explores what it takes to implement deduplication with VMware Disaster Recovery, and about leveraging the replicated data in your Disaster Recovery environment for Disaster Recovery testing and other purposes.