Summer 2020 Is Gone, But the Heat Remains…

When it’s summer, there’s nothing like cruising with the top down. But you’ve got to have the wheels, the slicks, the rev-happy engine, not just the vibe. No one likes a poser...neither on the strip nor on the racetrack. 

In IT, posers are quickly identified, scoffed at, and shooed from victory lane. Everyone knows that to race in the highly competitive disaster recovery (DR) circuit, you’ve got to have some serious horsepower under the hood. A sweet paint job, some fat tires, and a gravelly-sounding motor may seem the part, but it’s who's triumphant when the smoke clears, the smell of rubber dissipates, and the checkered flag drops that counts. To the winner goes the spoils, the title, the trophy, and the adoration of the fans.

Last year’s DRaaS (disaster recovery as a service) circuit received a newcomer from the hyperconverged infrastructure industry darling, Nutanix. Xi Leap burst out of the shop with a fresh look and brand-new set of features that made heads spin. Even the most loyal of its competitor’s fans stopped and kicked the tires. As it crossed the finish line in first place, race after race, the industry was forced to take notice. This was no flash in the pan startup – this was a hot rod with performance to match its gloss. It didn’t take long for competitors to see the big blue-green X fighting for the pole position in every race. 

Let the Record Speak for Itself

Here’s the first-year highlight reel from Xi Leap 1.0: 

• In the past 12 months, Xi Leap protected VM count has grown 10x, and customer count has increased 4x. 
• Nutanix VPN is being used by 27% of customers and reduces onboarding times by 66% on average.

In company-record time, Xi Leap has already launched itself as a workhorse for Nutanix, leveraging years of proven technology developed in its AOS Enterprise Cloud software as the engine for success. Building a DRaaS race car around a well-architected powerplant was natural – in fact, Xi Leap is a native extension of AOS, with the same management interface, Prism Central, to guide it. 

Introducing Turbocharged Xi Leap 2.0

Over the winter months, the Xi Leap engineers took their winning strategy and set out to improve upon it. During preseason time trials, Xi Leap has set spectators abuzz. With its new turbocharged NearSync RPO of five minutes and its proven RTO of one hour, industry pundits have already begun predicting even greater success in its second year. “Customers will not be disappointed,” says Senior Director of Product Management at Nutanix, Manjul Sahay, “Our confidence is very high this year for continued success, for our existing customers, as well as new ones.” The Xi Leap team has every intention of taking even more pole positions in its second season, expects to capture even more checkered flags, and is looking forward to celebrating its victory laps. 

Here's a closer look under the Xi Leap 2.0 hood: 

Performance:

• General Availability of five minute RPO, increasing protection of database and all mission critical apps; available for both ESX and AHV on-prem environments. 
• General Availability of larger VM sizes, supporting up to 384GB RAM and 34 vCPU VMs - great for large database and critical application VMs. 
• General Availability of multi-site VPN feature to connect multiple remote sites over VPN to one Xi DR site.  
• General Availability of Equinix Direct Connect for UK-London availability zone 

Customer Experience:

• New Xi Leap Onboarding Portal drastically simplifies customer experience. 

Improved Security:

• ISO 27701 privacy certification (Find all certifications listed here on Nutanix Trust website). 

Coming Soon:

• Automated DR Testing wherein the service automatically runs scheduled test failovers without customer intervention.
• Redundant backup of live VMs running on Xi Leap, using industry leading data protection partner, HYCU.

What This Means for Nutanix Customers

With a souped-up Xi Leap, customers will meet or exceed their business continuity metrics at a reduced total cost of ownership of up to 50%. Happy auditors and business managers mean fewer headaches and more weekends free for IT practitioners. It also means that even the most critical workloads are candidates for DRaaS protection, freeing up on-prem infrastructure for new projects and other dynamic business priorities. 

Not only does Nutanix DRaaS ensure apps and data are persistently protected, it also provides an extra level of protection against ransomware attacks. With 5-minute RPO, customers can be up and running on Xi Leap with minimal potential loss of data, disempowering hijackers. Enhanced security complements this, as well, making the decision to move to DRaaS easier than it has ever been. 

Free Test Drives for Everyone

The Nutanix team has offered anyone a free test drive of Xi Leap. Simply sign up and get ready to buckle in! Summer may be gone, but the sizzle remains – why should others have all the fun? Ladies and gentlemen...start your engines!

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