Amazon EC2 gets SunGard backup

disaster recovery services from the SunGard cloud, opening the door for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers to keep data and backup copies of virtual machines in a non-Amazon data centre, InformationWeek reports.

In the past, Amazon recommended customers keep their backup copies within an Amazon data centre or regional complex of centres.

It architected its regions into separate availability zones, each with its own power and communications. Even if a customer's primary zone failed, it would be able to recover in its backup zone, previous Amazon guidance said.

The new service, currently a technical preview that will be rolled out more fully this year, uses the Direct Connect services to provide LAN-like connectivity from AWS' US east coast data centres to SunGard's Enterprise Cloud Services, enabling two-way disaster recovery services without sending data over the Internet, Wired Cloudline says.

SunGard Availability Services also allows its customers to use AWS Storage Gateway, a software appliance with cloud-based storage using Amazon's Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which SunGard says provides customers an added layer of data protection.

“This is a complementary relationship that will have wide-reaching benefits for both organisations and our customers,” Indu Kodukula, CTO at SunGard Availability Services, says in a statement.

SunGard's pending service will also take advantage of AWS' recently announced, enterprise-oriented Storage Gateway, a software appliance that lets customers continue to store data in private clouds while simultaneously backing it up to S3, Search Cloud Computing reveals.

That additional security hedge and speed to recover may prove more attractive to SunGard Availability Services customers than to AWS users though.

“SunGard is offering to bundle up services that AWS provides and sell them to its own customers, who already look to SunGard for disaster recovery,” says Shlomo Swidler, CEO of Orchestratus, a cloud computing consultancy with extensive experience with AWS.