I’m super excited to demonstrate one of the new features of Arcserve RHA 18.0
Arcserve RHA Full System Linux Protection is a brand new way to protect Mission Critical Linux Servers along with all of their applications, data and system state.
What differentiates this from other products such as Arcserve UDP and products from different vendors is that Arcserve RHA uses your chosen Hypervisor or cloud to create an offline replica of the Linux server. The offline VM is continually kept up to date using Arcserve RHA’s unique real-time, byte-level replication.Recovering from disaster or even automating DR Testing is as simple as automating the spin-up of the Replica VM.
In this demo, I have decided to protect a Linux server that happens to be located within Amazon AWS – in North Virginia.
My chosen DR site happens to be the Australian region of AWS. However, I could protect the Linux server running on any platform, physical, virtual or cloud and I could have chosen Microsoft Azure, VMWare, Hyper-V, Citrix or KVM as my DR platform.
Why Full System Linux Protection Matters
Before RHA 18, protecting Linux servers typically meant one of two approaches: file-level backup using agents (which misses system state, services configuration, and installed packages) or image-based backup using tools like Arcserve UDP (which requires scheduled snapshots and a restore process that can take hours for large systems).
Arcserve RHA Full System Linux Protection takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than backing up files or capturing periodic images, it maintains a continuously updated replica of the entire Linux server — operating system, kernel, installed applications, configuration files, cron jobs, services, and all user data. The replica is a real virtual machine that can be started at any time.
How the Replication Works
The technical architecture behind RHA Full System Linux Protection is worth understanding:
- Initial synchronisation — RHA performs a block-level copy of the entire Linux filesystem to create the initial replica VM on your chosen hypervisor or cloud platform.
- Continuous replication — After the initial sync, RHA monitors filesystem changes at the byte level and replicates them to the replica in near-real-time. The replication engine runs as a lightweight service on the source Linux server.
- Replica VM management — The replica VM remains powered off during normal operation, consuming minimal resources. RHA periodically updates the VM’s disk image with the latest replicated changes.
- Failover — When disaster strikes, the replica VM can be powered on manually or automatically based on configurable health checks. Because the VM is already built and current, failover takes seconds rather than the hours required for a traditional bare-metal restore.
Supported Platforms and Configurations
One of the strengths of RHA 18 is its flexibility in mixing source and target platforms. The source Linux server can run on:
- Physical hardware — Rack-mounted or tower servers running any major Linux distribution (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu Server, SUSE, Debian)
- Virtual machines — Linux VMs on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, or KVM
- Cloud instances — Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure VMs, or Google Compute Engine instances
The replica can be placed on any of these platforms independently. In the demo, I replicated from AWS North Virginia to AWS Sydney, but you could just as easily replicate from an on-premises physical server to a Hyper-V host in a secondary data centre, or from an Azure VM to a VMware cluster.
Practical Use Cases
Cross-region disaster recovery — As demonstrated in this video, replicating a Linux server from one AWS region to another provides geographic redundancy. If the North Virginia region experiences an outage, the Australian replica can be started within seconds. This is particularly relevant for Australian organisations that run workloads in overseas regions for cost or latency reasons but need a local DR copy.
Physical-to-virtual migration — Organisations decommissioning ageing physical Linux servers can use RHA to create a continuously updated virtual replica before performing the final cutover. This eliminates the traditional migration window where the server would be offline.
Automated DR testing — Because the replica is a standard VM, DR test procedures can be fully automated. Schedule a script to power on the replica in an isolated network, run validation checks, then power it off again — all without affecting the production server or requiring manual intervention.
Hybrid cloud DR — An on-premises Linux server running a critical application (say, a PostgreSQL database or an Apache web server) can maintain a replica in AWS or Azure. If the on-premises infrastructure fails, the cloud replica takes over while the physical environment is repaired.
Getting Started with RHA 18
Arcserve RHA is licensed per server being protected. The RHA Control Service (management server) can run on Windows and manages all replication scenarios from a single web-based console. For partners looking to evaluate RHA Full System Linux Protection, Cloud Ready Solutions can arrange trial licences and provide technical guidance on deployment architecture.