This article was written by John Williamson, Nutanix

Here’s the thing about traditional disaster recovery solutions. Not only are they expensive and time consuming to set up and maintain, testing them is usually such a hassle that organizations often do the bare minimum required for compliance purposes--if even that. This means that organizations are simply operating on faith that their solution will come through during whatever disaster befalls them. This false sense of security from an untested solution is in some respects worse than having no solution at all.

Along comes Nutanix Xi Leap, an easy to use, no-install, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution. Not only is Xi Leap dead simple to set up and deploy, it also offers 1-click failover and failback, with on-demand testing. No more weeks or even months wasted setting up your DR test--and no more excuses for not testing.

The good news is you can see it for yourself today. Nutanix now offers Xi Leap Disaster Recovery as a Service Test Drive, and we’re delighted that our Nutanix Technology Champions (a community of Nutanix and industry experts) have already begun blogging about their test drive experiences on social media.

Here’s a few highlights:

Joep Piscaer wrote on his Virtual Lifestyle blog:

“Setting up the environment before I can even start is a major time-suck, and takes up valuable time I could’ve spent writing or doing other work. That’s why I’m happy that things like Nutanix Test Drive exist.

And it’s the ease of getting started with the more advanced workloads that save me time. Nutanix recently launched a Disaster Recovery as a Service module to their Test Drive experience, allowing me to dive into their BCDR features without spending hours to configure all the dependencies and infrastructure needed, like an on-prem cluster with storage, networking, VMs to protect, protection plans, recovery plans, etcetera. Instead, the lab is instantly ready to go, with a manual to guide me through the first experience.”

Piscaer leveled a challenge to his readers: “I completed it within 20 minutes, can you beat me?”

Timon Watson posted his blog on his LinkedIn page:

“The Nutanix Test Drive gives an excellent introduction to the Xi-Leap Disaster Recovery as a Service and clearly demonstrates how Nutanix’s one-click philosophy can simplify your DR planning. Creating and updating the Protection Policies and Recovery Plans is simple and protecting your servers and services is as easy as assigning them to a Category. Validating, testing and executing a failover are one-click operations, and with Xi-Leap, I know I could protect my critical services in a matter of hours. When the proverbial hits the fan, and you need to put your DR plan into action, stress levels will be high. You need a DR solution that is quick and easy to execute, and you are confident will work. Xi-Leap delivers all of these.”  

Simon Buchanan posted on Tech Beer:

“This test drive was a great way to experience the simplicity of Nutanix DR, whether that be to another DC or to the Cloud. Nutanix has done a great job here not only engineering simplicity throughout their product, but also in providing this test drive capability.”

Simon considered the Test Drive an “admirable start,” but thinks incorporating a "virtual case study" would kick it into high gear.

Raj Patel shared on My Own Reality;

“"Failover and Failback] is where Xi Leap and the Test Drive shined. In this module, you will be shown how Failover & Failback work. Failing over a workload is just one click and some waitingk.] Failing back is no different, select the plan and click Failover.”

Follow the links to read their blogs in full. Or just head on over and Test Drive Xi Leap yourself! In minutes, you get access to hands-on labs, as well as a guided tour that includes:

• What an Availability Zone is and how it can be set up (Configure Setup)
• How to configure Protection Policies and Recovery Plans (Configure Policies)
• Logging into the Xi console and initiating a failover (Perform a Failover)

Fasten your seat belts!

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