Softcat Limited

VMware Live Recovery

VMware Live Recovery offers VMware Live Cyber/Site Recovery. VLCR is an on-demand solution that provides cyber and data resiliency to VMware virtual machines by replicating and recovering them quickly to a target cloud in case of a natural disaster, ransomware attack, or other unplanned disruption of your production data center.

Features

• Next-gen antivirus and behavioural analysis to contain ransomware attacks
• Quarantined recovery environment with network isolation to prevent reinfection
• vSphere virtual machine replication as low as 15 minute RPO
• Variable retention schedule going back days/weeks/months/years
• Granular file/folder/VM level recovery
• DR test, failover and delta-based failback with full-featured DR orchestration
• Zero-touch day-2 lifecycle operations (upgrades, patching, etc.)
• Instant recovery using Live Mount capability
• Cloud-based Disaster Recovery portal

Benefits

• Quickly recover workloads from disasters, ransomware attacks, and other outages
• Perform behavioral analysis in an isolated environment to prevent reinfection
• Enable uniform processes to administer private and public cloud environments
• Simplify workflows for testing DR plans and for outage preparedness
• Zero-in on the right point-in-time from which to recover
• Spin-up a recovery SDDC only during testing or failover
• Automated compliance checks every 30 minutes
• Easy VM or file-level operational restores

£327 a virtual machine a year

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at psitq@softcat.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

613135510509178

Contact

Charles Harrison
01628 403403
psitq@softcat.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: No
• System requirements:
  • VMware vCenter (VC) must be 7.0 or later
  • VC 7.0U3 or later for high-frequency snapshots (<4hours RPO)
  • At least 8GHz reserved vCPU capacity in production site
  • At least 12GiB of vRAM reserved in production site
  • At least 100GiB of virtual disk space in production site

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: VMware Live Recovery support SLAs are listed here; https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmware-live-recovery-sla.pdf . Accessibility specific tickets can be filed here :; https://www.vmware.com/help/accessibility.html
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: No
• Support levels: VMware Live Recovery provides 24/7 production level support as part of the service at no additional cost.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We provide a range of resources to help to start using VMware Live Recovery. These include comprehensive documentation (in multiple formats), introductory videos, hands-on labs, access to a large ecosystem of partners and support from the account teams. Recommended starting point for all new users:; https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Live-Recovery/index.html
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: Replication of data to and from VMware Live Cyber Recovery is fully managed by the customer. Documentation exists along with additional tools and services to facilitate the replication, cloud failover, and failback of data. VMware Live Cyber Recovery stores customers data in an industry accepted virtual machine; format and VMware vSphere natively supports the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), making it simple to download, clone, migrate, copy, port or transfer workloads between environments. Users can restore data from all the VM snapshots stored in the VMware Live Cyber Recovery filesystem back to their production site using the built-in failback workflow or individual VM restore; capability.
• End-of-contract process: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/agreements/vmware-cloud- services-guide.pdf . Please refer to the section for VMware Live Recovery for all contract details

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: VMware Live Cyber Recovery has two web interfaces: Global DR Console and Orchestrator UI. The Global DR Console enables users to provision Orchestrators (also known as "Recovery Regions") and to create subscriptions. The Orchestrator UI allows users to consume VMware Live Cyber Recovery and includes several disaster recovery orchestrator capabilities to automate the disaster recovery process.
• Web interface accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web interface accessibility testing: The Broadcom Accessibility team has conducted testing on the product, evaluating its compliance with WCAG 2.1 level A and AA guidelines. The testing covered all product workflows, or user journeys, utilizing various mainstream accessibility-testing tools, including assistive technologies such as VoiceOver on Mac and NVDA on Windows and other tools. We have individuals who use assistive technology conducting the testing.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: [Feature in Preview] Users can use public REST APIs to query some basic information about their DR plan configuration: get cloud file systems, get protected sites, get protection groups, get protection group snapshots, get protected VMs,; and get recovery SDDCs
• API automation tools: Other
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • HTML
  • Other
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility:
  • Linux or Unix
  • Windows
• Using the command line interface: The VMware Live Cyber Recovery connector CLI* allows users to deploy and configure the connector on protected sites. Things users can do with the connector using the CLI: deploy the connector; configure the Connector; create a restricted vCenter user; register a restricted vCenter user; re-register a restricted Center user; run a connector connectivity check; run a connector performance check. *The Cyber Recovery connector is a stateless virtual appliance that enables replicating VM snapshot deltas from a protected site to the cloud file system, which are used for recovery operations.

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type:
  • Automatic
  • Manual
• Independence of resources: There is both capacity and network level isolation between different customers' environments to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. Each customer's VMware Live Cyber Recovery deployment - consisting of at least one Orchestrator component and one Cloud File System component - resides in a completely separate cloud account with its own dedicated compute, memory, networking, and storage resources. This eliminates the potential for other customers to access their workloads.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting: Other
• Other usage reporting: The service alerts users of reaching limits and provides suggestions via the CSP platform.

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics:
  • Logical storage capacity (in TiB) across all protected VMs
  • Breakdown of storage capacity and VMs for each Protection Group
  • Count of their total protected virtual machines
• Reporting types:
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards

Resellers

• Supplier type: Reseller (no extras)
• Organisation whose services are being resold: VMware

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations:
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • Other locations
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: Less than once a year
• Penetration testing approach: In-house
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: Backup data and DR configuration data encrypted at rest using an industry-standard AES-256 encryption algorithm.
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up: Virtual Machines
• Backup controls: VMware Live Cyber Recovery enables virtual machine snapshots to be replicated to a data center location of the user's choosing. When setting up a DR plan, users can create protection groups, consisting of different virtual machines.; Each protection group has its own policies for snapshots, which includes snapshot frequency schedule and retention. Virtual Machine disk images are backed up as part of each snapshot. Multiple protection groups can be a part of an; entire DR plan. More information on configuring protection groups here:; https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Live-Recovery/services/vmware-live-cyber-recovery/GUID-5A3D6A65-EA38-4045-8BFA-556AFBAC9117.html
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users schedule backups through a web interface
• Backup recovery: Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: VMware will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure VMware Live Cyber Recovery is available 99.9% during a given billing month. If the Availability of the Service Offering is less than the Availability Commitment, then you may request an SLA Credit. Availability in a given billing month is calculated according to the following formula: “Availability” = ([total minutes in a billing month – total minutes Unavailable] / total minutes in a billing month) x 100 More information about the SLA can be found at:; https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmware-live-recovery- sla.pdf
• Approach to resilience: VMware has a Business Continuity (BC) Management Program describing how VMware will respond to events that significantly disrupt our delivery of the Service Offering. Business Continuity Plan. VMware has a Business Continuity Plan ("Plan") intended to identify what preparations must be made in advance of a disruption, as well as the steps to be taken when an event actually occurs. The Plan is reviewed periodically to determine which business processes are most critical and what resources - people, equipment, records, computer systems and office facilities - are required for operation. All documented plans follow an annual standard maintenance and assessment schedule. Customer's cloud backups are persisted to durable cloud object storage that is replicated to at least 3 separate AWS availability zones. VMware Live Cyber Recovery Orchestrator and Cloud File System instances are stateless and automatically restarted as new cloud compute instances within a short duration in case of any disruption.
• Outage reporting: Email alerts

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Management interfaces implement role-based access controls and require members to authenticate against the corporate identity provider. It is also possible to configure access restrictions based on the originating IP address. Additional security and authentication mechanisms including the use of time-based credentials are used to secure and monitor access.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through:
  • Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
  • Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)
  • Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: KPMG
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 31/12/2023
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: N/A
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: Yes
• CSA STAR accreditation date: 26/04/2023
• CSA STAR certification level: Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment
• What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover: N/A
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • ISO 27017
  • ISO 27018
  • SOC 2 Type 2
  • SOC 3

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: VMware security policies are documented and available to employees on an internal web site. Policies and procedures are reviewed annually, updated as needed and retained for a minimum of six years from the date of creation. VMware utilizes a standard operating procedure repository to store an extensive set of documented procedures. Detailed procedures are defined for the following categories of functions: information security, physical security, network availability, HR, communications, risk/issues and service level customer service. On an annual basis, VMware Live Recovery is audited by third-party auditors for ISO 27001, SOC 2, SOC 3 and HIPAA. Policy adherence is included as a part of these third- party audits.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: The VMware Live Recovery team has a comprehensive development lifecycle and and change management system in place. Continuous reviews and testing occur on the software development pipelines for individual components. Approvals for any changes related to each new release are documented explicitly in JIRA and Bugzilla tickets. VMware generates builds from approved components and runs these through BITs (Basic Integration Tests), PVTs (Product Validation Tests), and Feature; Stress Lite Tests. Additionally, we run performance tests, feature stress tests, security scans, vulnerability tests and System Tests at scale for every cycle before any build is rolled out to customer environments.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: VMware has comprehensive vulnerability management program in place which includes regular internal (at least quarterly) and third-party vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. The VMware Security Response Center (VSRC) leads the analysis and remediation of service security issues. VSRC receives reports directly and monitors the ecosystem for relevant security issues and works with VMware R&D to develop and resolve issues. VMware Live Recovery has the capability to rapidly patch vulnerabilities. Remediation efforts and timelines are prioritized; and applied using industry best practices. For further details on the process and our commitment to customers, see the VMware; Security Response Policy https://www.vmware.com/support/policies/security _response.html.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: VMware has a Security Operations Center staffed 24x7 and alerted on security anomalies in the VMware Live Cyber Recovery environment. VMware Live Cyber Recovery has several intrusion detection/prevention mechanisms in place and the service continuously collects and monitors the environment logs which are correlated with both public and private threat feeds to spot suspicious and unusual activities. The customer is responsible for the security of the environment over which they have administrative level control. Details on the shared responsibility model employed by VMware Live Cyber Recovery are available here: https://core.vmware.com/resource/vmware-cloud- disaster-recovery- shared-responsibility-mode
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: The process complies with industry standards for legally admissible chain- of-custody and forensic-data-collection management processes and controls. Response standards, procedures, methods are implemented based on the severity level. If VMware determines that unauthorized access to/use/disclosure of customer content, VMware will use commercially reasonable efforts to notify customers, taking into account any applicable law, regulations, governmental request. VMware will also notify customers of a suspected breach of the infrastructure if that breach occurred on a segment of the platform consumed by a customer, or in the event of Denial of Service attacks. VMware does not monitor guest workloads for such breaches.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: VMware
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: There is both capacity and network level isolation between different customers' environments to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. Each customer's VMware Live Cyber Recovery deployment -; consisting of at least one Orchestrator component and one Cloud File System component - resides in a completely separate cloud account with its own dedicated compute, memory, networking, and storage resources. This eliminates the potential for other customers to affect their workloads.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: VMware Live Cyber Recovery utilizes AWS datacenters and information about AWS & Sustainability can be found here:; https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Softcat are dedicated to reducing our environmental impact and actively promoting sustainability. Our commitment to sustainability is a core aspect of our business strategy, driving us to innovate and lead in the creation of a more sustainable future for our company and the communities we serve. This commitment is embedded in our policies, operating procedures, and training programs.; ; We are proud to be the first FTSE 250 company to be awarded 5-star status in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. ; ; We aim to achieve a Carbon Net-Zero Value Circle by 2040 by prioritising renewable energy, reducing natural resource use, minimising waste, and safeguarding biodiversity in compliance with environmental legislation.; ; At Softcat, we have taken significant steps towards securing renewable energy across our organisation, reducing our scope 1 & 2 emissions. We had the target of using 100% Renewable Energy across all our locations by 2024. We successfully delivered against this target ~2 years early.; ; In May 2023 we took delivery of 15 electric vehicles, replacing all existing fossil-fuelled company cars used by employees for business means. The implementation of the EV pool fleet will see a saving of over 80 tons of CO2e per year. A huge impact on our Net Zero targets.

  Tackling economic inequality

  As a value-add reseller, Softcat outsources the products, services, and solutions through our extensive network of partners, to best suit the needs of our broad client base. We always consider and promote SMEs and local providers where appropriate, particularly for the products and services we offer via the G Cloud framework.; ; We remain dedicated to improving employability and educational awareness across schools, colleges, and universities to help break down the barriers to joining technology organisations.; ; We work collaboratively with many schools that are close in proximity to our offices, to ensure we are actively supporting the community as well as schools from lower socio-economic backgrounds. ; ; We visit the schools to talk about the IT sector and the roles in our organisation, as well as promoting work-experience opportunities during the summer. In particular, we actively encourage students from diverse backgrounds to engage in work experience to appreciate the roles available in our sector.; ; For ambitious school and college leavers, a Softcat Apprenticeship is a great first step into the world of work, with 94% of our apprentices offered a permanent position at Softcat post apprenticeships, which goes to show the amazing opportunity available with us.; ; We were ranked 1st in IT & Consultancy, and 10th overall in by RateMyApprenticeship.com - Best 100 Apprenticeship Employers 2023-2024 list.; ; Softcat now also offer 12 month paid internships to University students looking to complete a year in industry as part of their undergraduate studies.

  Equal opportunity

  Our approach to diversity and inclusion is introduced first during our induction training, as part of our Softcat values, outlining responsibility to uphold our principles. This message is reinforced by our process and policies, networks, Allyship Training and Inclusion Awareness campaigns.; ; Softcat supports diversity and inclusion through various networks including:; - Supporting Women in Business (SWIB); - The Ethnic and Cultural Network; - The Pride Network; - The Family Network; - The Empowering Disability and Neurodiversity Network (EDN); - The Faith at Work Network; - Armed Forces & Veterans Network; These networks aim to create a supportive and inclusive work environment for all employees, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or family commitments.; ; Our allyship programme, Stronger Together, is a mixture of event and workshop-based training available to all staff. Programme topics include, bias, power, privilege, and being a greater ally. ; ; Inclusion Awareness campaigns include race, disability, sexual orientation, gender, faith, and caring responsibilities. These sessions highlight and celebrate minority groups, through panel sessions, Q&A sessions and training, providing an opportunity to discuss and understand ways to be more inclusive. ; ; Our efforts to improve diversity and inclusion have been incredibly successful. Since 2020, the number of female employees below management level has increased to 35%, and the number of ethnic minority employees rose to 17%.

  Wellbeing

  At Softcat, all employees are provided with access to our multidimensional wellbeing programme which includes flexible work arrangements, free nutritious breakfast, mental health support, employee benefits scheme, health and wellbeing week activities, and online workshops.; ; Giving back to the community is an innate part of who we are as a company. All Softcat employees are therefore given two volunteer days per year to support a charitable or community cause. ; ; Each of our 10 regional offices also support local charities through fundraising, donations and events. For example, our Manchester office has raised over £30,000 for the WeLoveMCR charity. This funding has supported young, disadvantaged Manchester citizens in gaining qualifications to broaden their work opportunities and supporting local groups in delivering indispensable services that enable community cohesion.

Pricing

• Price: £327 a virtual machine a year
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at psitq@softcat.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.