Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Protects Hyper-V VMs

If you think that Microsoft lags behind VMware in virtual machine (VM) site protection, you might want to take a look at Microsoft's new Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager. On January 16, 2014, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manger.

Related: Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Reaches General Availability Release

Microsoft's Answer To VMware's Site Recovery Manager

Hyper-V Recovery Manager is Microsoft's answer to VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Hyper-V Recovery Manager protects your private cloud applications and services by replicating private cloud services to a secondary site. To do this, Hyper-V Recovery Manger leverages Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replica, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Recovery Manager provides the following capabilities:

The Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manger service is hosted in Windows Azure and it communicates with System Center Virtual Machine Manager to initiate a site-to-site replication of Hyper-V VMs. The VMs being replicated between sites are never stored in Azure. The Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager is the centralized control plane where the replication and recovery configuration and status are stored.

How To Setup Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager

To setup the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager, you first use the Windows Azure Management Portal to create a Hyper-V Recovery Manager Vault. You can specify which Azure region to use when creating the vault. Next, a Quick Start page is displayed that guides you on how to secure the vault with a certificate, install the Hyper-V Recovery Manager provider on VMM, and then configure the protection and recovery of your VMs. You can dig into the details of setting up the Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Microsoft's step-by-step tutorial.

Hyper-V Recovery Manager Pricing

The price Hyper-V Recovery Manager is based on the number of VMs that are protected, and it starts at $16 per month per VM. You can find out more about pricing at Hyper-V Recovery Manager Pricing Details. Microsoft is providing a preview price of 50 percent off through February 28, 2014. To learn more about Microsoft's recent announcement of Hyper-V Recovery Manager, you can check out Brad Anderson's blog Announcing the GA of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager.

Related: New Tool to Move VMware Work Loads to Hyper-V