Saturday, November 27, 2010

Turnkey Internet announces the Bank key in hand, secure online data backup solution

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Intronis_Online_Data_Backup_Review_Managed_Services_Data_Recovery_Resellers_IT

Albany, NY, 3 novembre 2010 – (Figaro) – un fournisseur de solutions Web Internet clés en main a annoncé aujourd'hui le lancement de la Banque de clés en main, une solution de sauvegarde en ligne sécurisée pour les entreprises et les particuliers. Clé en main de la Banque est entièrement automatisée, le stockage de sauvegardes solidement dans le Centre de données sur Internet clés en main. Sauvegardes exigent un mot de passe privée pour le déchiffrement, assurer la confidentialité des données maximale.

Clé en main de la Banque utilise le cryptage de grade militaire lors de l'envoi d'informations sur l'Internet, avec un logiciel qui offre de restauration rapide des données.Clé en main de la Banque offre une interface facile à utiliser pour la personnalisation rapide et simple.

« Je ne peux pas souligner assez l'importance des sauvegardes complètes à une entreprise.Lorsque vous générez votre clientèle, perdre vos documents financiers, des projets créatifs, des courriels et communique avec les moyens de perdre votre chemise, a déclaré Adam Wills, président et CEO d'Internet clés en main. « Protéger vos données signifie protéger votre avenir, et nous sommes heureux d'être en mesure de fournir ce service important à nos clients. »

Avec 2 Go d'espace de sauvegarde gratuit pour la vie, clients peuvent utiliser la Banque de clés en main immédiatement, sans risque ni engagement. Clé en main est compatible avec n'importe quel PC et installe en quelques secondes.Cette solution d'entreprise complète est la dernière version en Bundle de Business de SaaS d'Internet clés en main qui inclut leur prochaine génération Courriel et la connectivité outil, TurnKeyMail ;leur logiciel marketing Courriel, Bulletin d'information clés en main. et le site Web de clés en main, leur service de générateur de site Web de génération prochaine.

Sur Internet clés en main
Clés en main, Inc. est un fournisseur leader de solutions d'hébergement et d'affaires de web géré.Basé à Albany, New York, Internet clés en main, Inc. et sa filiale Systems Voxwire, fournit entreprise web services à des clients dans plus de 30 pays par l'intermédiaire de ses multiples centres de données de New York.Clés en main, Inc. est un A-Note : affaires accrédités avec le Better Business Bureau de Nord de l'état de New York.

Contact
Anneke Rudegeair
Internet clés en main
518-618-0999, Poste 103
Press@turnkeyinternet.NET
http://www.turnkeyinternet.NET

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Des postes : clés en main choisit R1Soft haute performance CDP logiciels Internet à Power Premium hors site, Internet du ServiceUK de la sauvegarde en ligne de Zen, lance Zen Banque d'entreprise, un service de sauvegarde de données en ligne pour entreprises de tous les SizesVault USA annonce une application de sauvegarde de données en ligne 'Powered by Nine' et de récupération PlatformUTV Internet : UTV Internet élargit son portefeuille de sécurité de F-Secure (et le service de sauvegarde en ligne ajoutée) sublime solutions annonce le lancement du Sublime Online Backup Banque, un en ligne SolutionComcast lance Secure Online Backup & part en ligne stockage solution de sauvegarde pour ses clients Internet, Powered par MozyVault USA acquiert MoreStor Banque en ligne sauvegarde et récupération offre

Tags : Adam Wills, annonce, sauvegarde de données, lance, communiqués de presse, sauvegarde en ligne, sécuriser, solution clé en main, Internet clés en main, clés en main Banque


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The misery of online data backup solutions

Have you ever considered online data backup options whenever you are on a computer and are unable to create a backup of your data because you do not have the appropriate media? Let's face it, everyone is in a situation where they had just completed an important job and have no way of transporting it to their computer system.

Fortunately, there are several options for backing up data online, and with the expansion of the internet wide band, these options are starting to become really popular.

If the file or piece of data that you want to create an online backup is relatively small, you should consider likely just send you a copy of the file from one of the many internet E-mail services free. You can use your web mail account, or if you do not have a web mail account can simply create an account with one of the literally thousands of web free e-mail providers.

If sending the file to yourself in an e-mail is not your cup of tea, you can also download the file to one of the many free web servers such as GeoCities or tripod.These options are not only easy but also cheap, because they are 100% free.

In addition to the above options, several online services exist mainly for the safeguarding of données.alors most of these monthly services, they are dedicated to providing their users with a variety of tools for backing up data online.Ibackup.com is widely regarded as a better backup services online, whereas it is also one of the original data.

Another option for Yahoo users is to use the free yahoo b.c Briefcase service' is essentially a raguly version on popular pay services mentioned above only with limited web space and only a few tools to upload your data.

If you do not want to pay for such a service, you should probably reconsider just send you a copy of the file by e-mail, or download a copy of the file to a web site / ftp serveur.Il can be a little more work than simply with a web browser to download a copy of the files to a backup service, but don't forget that it is still available.

James Fohl is a contributor to the free - backup .info - the home of the popular tool for online backup and recovery - Back2zip before article found at http://free-backup.info/solutions-for-online-data-backup-woes.html


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Friday, November 26, 2010

What is a backup online?

An online backup offers an alternative to optical or tape backup solutions. While traditional methods can be very effective, they need capital to configure and personnel to operate. An online backup system to avoid these problems.

Online backup provider provides a software agent must be installed on the computer at sauvegarder.Cette room occupied the software allows the user to select which files to backup, manages the internet connection, encrypts and compresses the data before the transfer on the internet in a secure, remote location and allows the user to view and restore the backed-up documents.

Online backups offer several advantages. The main proceedings is offered by off-site storage disaster recovery, but there are also several advantages in terms of ease of use.

No capital expenditure is required to purchase new matériel.Il has no current media costs or costs of staff, operating costs are limited to pay a fee mensuelle.Le Setup and installation is a simple question to download the software and takes a few minutes to implement.Data retrieval is also quickly, because there is no search band right or waiting for it staff to retrieve lost data.

The backup process itself is fully automated which ensures that it gets done, and the backed up files and then are accessible by anyone with permission to share with the displacement of colleagues, clients or PC files home.

An intrinsic characteristic of online backup is based on an internet.Pour connection most small volumes of data a modem connection may be sufficient, but can handle volumes much more permanent broadband connection is a necessity in most cases.

What type of connection is used, the initial backup will take a certain temps.Une full copy of the data must be encrypted, compressed and copied.This initial copy might be overly long if a large amount of data is sent on a connection, dial while online backup providers more will allow the user to suspend and resume later backup.Once this initial backup is complete, subsequent backups will be only for backing up files that have changed, which makes it much faster.

Even though some may have understandable concerns about third party holding their most valuable data, in fact, online backups are very sécurisés.Avant transferred, backup data are encrypted with 128-bit - military grade - level making it impossible effectively for anyone to intercept or to decrypt data .the ' user is the only person who can read.

Another common concern is safety central data storage itself it is invariably class-A facility equipped with firefighting, cameras security, backup electricity generators and personal access controls for multiple Internet service providers, firewall high range and clustering and mirroring to ensure that the data stored are always available for clients.Sauf in exceptional cases, local storage techniques is safer than the client's premises.

Andrew Whitehead is a contributor to the free - backup .info - the Amazon S3 popular base for backing up data online - Back2zip before article software house located at http://free-backup.info/what-is-an-online-backup.html


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Overview of disaster recovery

In a world of large companies with global operations, operating continuously and business continuity becomes increasingly critical, making a disaster recovery plan becomes more necessary. In the ideal disaster recovery will be be completely automatic, absolutely no loss of data, cost nothing and immediately occur with no effect on the business operations. It would, in fact, be invisible to the customers. It is not possible, it makes sense to get close to ideal as possible.

Accepted both a disaster recovery plan criteria are the target recovery point and recovery time objective.Recovery time objective is the moment where normal commercial must be restored, of course, it wants to be the most short possible.Objectif recovery point is the time for which data must be restored back successfully processing, generally the last point of backup.

Not all data held by a company is essential for the basic operations, but deciding what is and is not critical can itself become a great company and segregation in fact it still more donc.Pour because of this, many companies choose not to adopt this approach and instead reproduce everything they.For companies with a relatively local site for replication and a direct link, it is a very attractive option.

If a regional disaster protection is necessary, requiring the use of a telecommunications link to transfer data, the cost of regular reproduce everything can be extremely high and it may be necessary to prioritize data or use copies less fréquentes.Cela has an impact on the definition of recovery time objective (the amount of data can be transferred?) and recovery point objective (frequency data are transferred?).

Like any other event, disasters have a beginning and an end.The time between is called "rolling disaster."

All disaster recovery solution must provide an image or copy data, as it existed prior to the disaster, location secondaire.alors than any image or copy of the data at any time before the disaster can be regarded as reliable, the reliability of all copies made for rolling disaster cannot be guaranteed.It is unlikely to be a problem for a short time rolling disaster, but it's disaster étendue.Il is becomes particularly relevant if a solution in which the data is copied permanently, continuous availability, disaster recovery is being employed.

Directly between the primary and alternate sites via ESCON, repeaters, sets a limit of most modern geographic 43 km of dark fibre separation and dense wave division Multiplexer (DWDM) technology, sites can be directly linked up to 90 km distance .c ' is enough to connect two datacenters Metro and gives a greater disaster protection while allowing bandwidths higher that offers this technology.

If there is a requirement for protection of a regional disaster, separating the primary sites and replacing it with a greater than 90 km, distance the sole means of replication data is on télécommunications.Comme lines distance, bandwidth requirements and the amount of data increases, this can become a very expensive choice.

Andrew Whitehead is a contributor to the free - backup .info - the home of the best tool backup online - Back2zip before article found at http://free-backup.info/overview-of-disaster-recovery.html


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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Quantum refreshes the system high range at SNW data deduplication backup

VIGNE, Texas - Quantum Corp. completed an update of its DXi data de-duplication disk backup portfolio today, launch of the company DXi8500 virtual tape (VTLS) at Storage Networking World (SNW) library.

The DXi8500 replaces the DXi7500 as the top range of quantum backups on disk portfolio and comes after a review of year DXi.Quantum platform launched storage attached to the network (NAS) for midrange DXi6500 last October, a medium range DXi6700 deduplication backup appliance in Augu...
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St and DXi4500 appliances for small-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in May.

The redesign came after EMC acquired Data Domain and completed its OEM agreement to sell quantum dedupe software. EMC Data Domain is now principal competitor of quantum déduplication.Quantum backup market position as a competitor of the EMC Data Domain DD8800 DXi8500.

A box of DXi8500 20 TB TB usable 200 scales. It is built with six Nehalem processors and quantum claims that it can perform 6.4 TB per hour – three times as fast as DXi7500.Le DXi8500 supports charge RAID 6, GPBs SAS 6 drives and 8 GB / S Fibre Channel 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Steve Whitner, quantum, disc products product marketing manager, said faster processors and 15,000 rpm SAS drives are the main reasons for boosting performance kick. Quantum has changed the way it indexes the metadata and search dismissals on disk for better draw party SAS drives faster, he said.

"What we do is placing part of fast disk data to verify dedupe," added Whitner. "Certain data need many e/S and if speak you to fast disk then it speeds up the whole operation.»

Server and StorageIO analyst Greg Schulz said early discussions surrounding deduplication systems based on the ratio of reduction, but now more clients and service providers recognize the time and performance are also.

"For most customers, performance issues", he said. "" ""Transfer rate question as well as reduction ratios. Quantum, like other providers, is aware of the need for speed, especially for larger customers, issues and they do some chose.Toute application has a window backup and data recovery runs, you must move data quickly.»

The DXi8500 supports VTL, NAS and Symantec Corp. OST interfaces simultaneously and its feature live bands bypasses the server backup and writes data directly to tape.

"People still use tape, the DXi8500 is able to migrate to the band," said Whitner. " But he did not go back to the client backup server.We have ties with backup applications.Backup software knows that data had been displaced.»

Advanced information of quantum and Quantum Vision 4.0 management software is part of the package database license.Report shows the amount of data is passing in each port and displays the CPU operations, use e/S disk capacity and the amount of data is stored for quantum pointe.Vision Deduplication is a central console for the overall management of disk and tape.

The DXi8500 list price is $430,000 DXi8500 with 90 to usable and VTL $731,000 fresh interface.

No DXi8500 global de-duplication backup media

Quantum does not yet support global de-duplication, allowing customers to Deduplicate data in several software most boîtes.La de-duplication applications support global de-duplication as Sepaton Inc. and IBM diligent.EMC added a global array of deleting duplicates in April that cancellations on both nodes.

Whitner said quantum uses replication to obtain comparable benefits between the two systems. ""We can go up to 200 TB per controller," he said. ""If there is a second area, replicate us across systems".

Huawei Symantec introduces SAN and storage unified

Huawei Symantec Technologies, a company of joint-venture between networking Huawei and Symantec, Chinese society has launched two systems storage disk star company produces Nord.Le America Oceanspace S2600 SAN is targeted at SMEs and Oceanspace N8300 unified storage product can be used to level environments and small business.

Both products have already tested other markets such as Europe, Asia, South America and Asia, said Jane Li, General Manager of North America, Huawei Symantec.

Huawei Symantec OEM for his Oceanspace N8300 using its own equipment for the device that supports memory-file supports clustered NAS, SAN and iSCSI.Il mode active-active cluster, 48 GB of cache and scales with a capacity of 8 TB.Le filesystem scales up to 256 a tuberculosis dynamic storage tiering and manages different types of disk, SSD, SAS, SATA and CF.

SAN S2600 Oceanspace multimode handles product, multiniveau.Il data protection and multi-site disaster recovery data replication disk has a 64-bit, 4 GB of memory expandable cache processor and holds 96 disques.Il supports SATA and SAS drives and can handle 256 hosts connections.


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Advice from Veeam backup and an overview of backup and Veeam 5 replication

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By Eric Siebert

Data backup is one area where many companies struggle after virtualizing their environments because traditional backup methods are often inefficient in virtual server environments. Veeam Software recognized the need for better backup products for VMware environments and introduced its Veeam Backup and Replication product in 2008. At the time, there were two other vendors with specific backup products for VMware -- PHD Virtual Technologies with esXpress and Vizioncore (now Quest Software) with esxRanger. Both of these products were launched in 2006. Veeam tried to distinguish its product from the others by quickly embracing the new technologies that VMware develops. Veeam Backup and Replication 5 has recently been released, and has many new features. In this article, we will first cover Veeam backup with 4.1.2 and then highlight some of the new features in version 5.

VEEAM BACKUP TIPS AND A PREVIEW OF VEAM BACKUP AND REPLICATION 5

An overview of Veeam Backup and Replication
Veeam Backup & Replication and synthetic backups
Backup methods supported by Veeam Backup and Replication
Veeam Backup and Replication installation notes
Version 5 of Backup and Replication

AN OVERVIEW OF VEEAM BACKUP AND REPLICATION

Veeam has always bundled backup and replication into one product; other VMware backup vendors sell their replication products separately. Veeam was also one of the first backup vendors to embrace the new VMware vStorage APIs that were a huge improvement over VMware Consolidated Backup. Veeam was quick to leverage the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) feature in vSphere that allows for faster incremental backups as well as near-continuous data protection (CDP) with the product's replication engine. Veeam Backup and Replication includes many other advanced features such as:

Full support for backing up both ESX and ESXi hostsFull support for all the new vSphere features as well as the new vStorage APIs for Data ProtectionSupport for both bare-metal virtual machine restore (vmdk) and native individual file restore (Windows only). Individual file restore also possible for all other operating systems through the use of VMware Player (VBR version 4), a virtual applicance (VBR version 5) or through vPower. Inline data deduplication and compression of target backup dataSupport for both VMware Tools quiescing and a proprietary agent that leverages Microsoft's VSS driver for performing application-consistent backups VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION AND SYNTHETIC BACKUPS

Veeam has embraced the synthetic backup model instead of the traditional full/incremental backup method that many backup products use. Synthetic backups provide smaller backup windows and less resource consumption than traditional backups because you never have to do periodic full backups of your virtual machines (VMs). With synthetic backups, a full backup is only done once and, from that point, subsequent backups are all incremental backups.

You might think that would make restores difficult because you could potentially need a huge number of incremental backup files to restore something, but that's not the case. What happens with synthetic backups is after the incremental backup takes place, the backup server combines the data with previous backups to synthesize a full backup. By doing this, you always have an up-to-date full backup copy without ever having to perform a full backup on a VM. But if you always have a current full backup, what if you want to restore older data? This is possible, too, because all changes are backed up and saved as rollback files, and historical data is used to calculate reverse increments. To support compliance and corporate policies, Veeam Backup and Replication also supports doing periodic full backups by using a special backup job that resets the chain of rollback files, so all subsequent incremental backups will use the new full backup. With the release of Backup and Replication version 5, Veeam has made the traditional forward-incremental mode the default, but you can still use the reverse-incremental synthetic mode as well.

DATA BACKUP METHODS SUPPORTED BY VEEAM BACKUP AND REPLICATION

Veeam Backup and Replication supports different backup methods that can be used depending on your environment; this includes the vStorage APIs, VMware Consolidated Backup and traditional network backups. The vStorage APIs are the successor to VMware Consolidated Backup and both allow you to directly access VM storage without going through the host (LAN-free). You can also use traditional over-the-network backups that go through the host to access VM storage, for ESX hosts (not ESXi) an agent is deployed to the Service Console to help make the backup more efficient.

vStorage APIs: Using the vStorage APIs is the preferred method because it's the most efficient method. When using the vStorage APIs, there are four transport modes available: SAN mode, SAN mode with failover, network mode and virtual appliance mode. SAN mode is only supported for VMs running on a block storage device and allows Veeam Backup and Replication to directly access the VM datastores without going through an ESX or ESXi host, which results in less resource usage on the host. This typically means you have to run Veeam Backup and Replication on a physical server that has direct access to the VM datastores though a Fibre Channel HBA or iSCSI initiator. However, running Veeam Backup and Replication on a VM and using a Microsoft iSCSI initiator installed in the guest OS to connect directly to an iSCSI datastore works equally well. SAN mode with failover adds a safety mechanism; if for some reason SAN mode becomes unavailable, it will fail over to network mode to complete the backups. This can be undesirable because it puts more resource usage on the ESX host while backups are running in network mode.

Network mode: Network mode is the least efficient mode because the Veeam Backup and Replication server is connecting to the ESX/ESXi host over the network using Network Block Device Protocol (NBD) to connect to the VM datastore. This adds additional network traffic and resource usage on the host that can negatively impact the VMs running on the host. To help improve efficiency in network mode on ESX hosts, a service console agent is deployed at runtime; however, with ESXi this isn't possible due to its more limited management console. For VMs running on local storage, this mode is necessary because the Veeam Backup and Replication server cannot directly access the VMs disks.

Virtual appliance mode: Finally, there is virtual appliance mode where Veeam Backup and Replication is installed on a VM, and disks from the VMs that are backed up are "hot-added" to the Veeam Backup and Replication VM. The data is read directly from the storage stack instead of over the network. The hot-add ability is new to vSphere. In the 4.0 version, a temporary helper VM without any virtual disks was necessary for this; with vSphere 4.1 the helper isn't needed. The advantage of using virtual appliance mode is its ability to directly back up VMs on NFS storage, which previously had to be done with the less efficient network mode.

Performance-wise there is not much difference between SAN mode and virtual appliance mode as they both leverage the storage stack to access source data instead of dragging it through the network stack. The area that has the biggest impact on backup performance is hardware configuration of both the Veeam backup server and the target device if it's a server. While you can use Veeam Backup and Replication on a server with two CPU cores, your performance will suffer. Veeam recommends at least four cores and up to eight for best performance. Remember, the Veeam Backup and Replication server is not just picking up data from the source and sending it to the destination. It also uses advanced logic to try to minimize the amount of data that it needs to copy and store by using data deduplication and compression. Having enough CPUs and RAM available is critical for achieving the best backup performance possible.

INSTALLING VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION

The Veeam Backup server can be installed on either a physical server or virtual machine and includes several components: an API shell interface, a backup service that handles the coordination of all the jobs, and a manager process that controls backup agents deployed to the source and target hosts. While the backup server must be installed on a Windows OS, it can back up VMs that have any OS supported by vSphere. In addition, a database is also required to store backup and configuration information. An existing SQL Server 2005/2008 server can be used for this, otherwise SQL Server 2005 Express is automatically installed. For larger or geographically diverse environments that require multiple Veeam Backup and Replication servers, there's a separate Enterprise Manager application that can be installed to centrally manage multiple servers through a Web interface. Built-in file-level restore is supported only for Windows operating systems but Veeam leverages VMware Player to do multi-OS file-level restores for other operating systems like Linux. Veeam uses VMware Player to power on the VM image and mount its file system; you can then browse the VM's file system in a Windows Explorer-like interface and copy files from it to a local PC or network share.

Veeam has some of the best documentation that I've ever seen which makes installing Veeam Backup and Replication a simple process.

VEEAM BACKUP & REPLICATION VERSION 5

When Veeam announced version 5 of its Backup and Replication product back in March, the company also announced a new feature called SureBackup. Most companies trust that their backups are working properly and don't bother to periodically verify them. Even if you do periodically verify your backups, it is a resource- and time-intensive process. Veeam came up with a method to automatically verify VM backups to ensure that they can be recovered. This is done by powering on the backed up VM directly from the compressed and deduped backup repository without extracting it first. The VM is isolated from the rest of the network so it won't affect the original production VM that the backup was generated from. Once the VM is powered on, the verification then consists of checking the VM's heartbeat that's generated from VMware Tools, and also pinging it. This verifies that the operating system was able to successfully boot; you can additionally specify test scripts to run to verify that applications are running properly and data is accessible. For more information, Veeam has made a video that shows Veeam SureBackup in action.

Veeam Backup and Replication has other new features that are based on the ability to run a VM from a backup repository. Veeam calls this ability vPower. In addition to SureBackup, these features also leverage vPower:

Instant whole virtual machine recovery: A VM can be instantly powered on from the backup repository and moved back to a host using the Storage VMotion featureInstant file-level recovery: A VM can be instantly powered on from the backup repository and individual files copied from it to a restore destination. Optionally the VM backup disk file can also be mounted without powering the VM so files can be copied from it.Universal application-item recovery (U-AIR): Using a workflow process, individual application items (e.g., database records) from supported applications like Exchange and SQL Server can be easily restored

With SureBackup and instant VM recovery, Veeam is basically turning the Veeam Backup and Replication server into a NFS server that's attached to an ESX/ESXi host using the host's built-in NFS client. Once that's done, the Veeam Backup and Replication server can present a virtual disk file for the VM from any existing restore point to the ESX/ESXi host so it can be powered on. Once the VM is powered on, the backup image remains read-only and any changes made while the VM is powered on are written to a delta file (just like VM snapshots) and discarded afterwards. Besides recovery verification and instant recovery, this technology allows you to create a sandbox or lab environment from VM backups that you can use for troubleshooting or testing purposes without effecting your production VMs. The restored VMs are kept isolated on the network from the other VMs by using internal-only vSwitches that have no physical NICs, and using a special routing proxy appliance that is automatically deployed to allow controlled communication with outside networks. The appliance also uses IP masquerading and routing tables to avoid IP address conflicts between production VMs and the backed up VMs.

With Veeam Backup and Replication 5, Veeam is changing its licensing model for Backup and Replication and splitting it into two editions: Standard and Enterprise. SureBackup is included in both, but is a manual process in the Standard edition and fully automated in the Enterprise edition. The U-AIR feature is only included in the Enterprise edition. Instant file-level recovery is available in both editions, in the Standard edition the searchable index is limited to backups that exist in the target disk repository. In the Enterprise edition, the index is kept even if the backup has been removed or moved from the target disk repository (i.e., swept to tape). In addition, the on-demand sandbox feature is only available in the Enterprise edition.

These new features in Veeam Backup and Replication will provide companies with some new capabilities and will help make the backup and recovery job an easier one.

About this author: Eric Siebert is an IT industry veteran with more than 25 years experience covering many different areas but focusing on server administration and virtualization. He is a very active member in the VMware Vmtn support forums and has obtained the elite Guru status by helping others with their own problems and challenges. He is also a Vmtn user moderator and maintains his own VMware VI3 information website, vSphere-land. In addition, he is a regular blogger and feature article contributor on TechTarget's SearchServerVirtualization and SearchVMware websites.


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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A look inside continuous data protection software

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By W. Curtis Preston

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines continuous data protection (CDP) "as a methodology that continuously captures or tracks data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery points from any point in the past … data changes are continuously captured … stored in a separate location … [and RPOs] are arbitrary and need not be defined in advance of the actual recovery."

Please note that you don't see the word "snapshot" above. While it's true that much of today's continuous data protection software allows users to create known recovery points in advance, they're not required. To be considered continuous data protection, a system must be able to recover to any point in time, not just to when snapshots are taken.

CDP systems start with a data tap or write splitter. Writes destined for primary storage are "tapped" or "split" into two paths; each write is sent to its original destination and also to the continuous data protection system. The data tap may be an agent in the protected host or it can reside somewhere in the storage network. Running as an agent in a host, the data tap has little to no impact on the host system because all the "heavy lifting" is done elsewhere. Continuous data protection products that insert their data taps in the storage network can use storage systems designed for this purpose, such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc.'s Storage Application Services API, Cisco Systems' MDS line and its SANTap Service feature or EMC Corp. Clarion's built-in splitter functionality. Some CDP systems offer a choice of where their data tap is placed.

Users then need to define a consistency group of volumes and hosts that have to be recovered to the same point in time. Some continuous data protection systems allow the creation of a "group of groups" that contains multiple consistency groups, creating multiple levels of granularity without sacrifice. Users may also choose to perform application-level snapshots on the protected hosts, such as placing Oracle in backup mode or performing Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshots on Windows. (Remember, snapshots aren't required.) Some CDP systems simply record these application-level snapshots when they happen, while others provide assistance to perform them. It's very helpful when the continuous data protection system maintains a centralized record of application-level snapshots, as they can be very useful.

Each write is transferred to the first recovery device, which is typically another appliance and storage array somewhere else within the data center. This proximity to the data being protected allows the writes to be either synchronously replicated or asynchronously replicated with a very short lag time. Even if a continuous data protection system supports synchronous replication, most users opt for asynchronous replication to avoid any performance impact on the production system. A CDP system may support an adaptive replication mode where it replicates synchronously when possible, but defaults to asynchronous during periods of high activity.

The data is stored in two places: the recovery volume and the recovery journal. The recovery volume is the replicated copy of the volume being protected and will be used in place of the protected volume during a recovery. The recovery journal stores the log of all writes in the order they were performed on the protected volume; it's used to roll the recovery volume forward or backward in time during a recovery. It may also be used as a high-speed buffer where all writes are stored before they're applied to the recovery volume. This design allows the recovery volume to be on less-expensive storage as long as the recovery journal uses storage that is as fast as or faster than the protected volume.

Once data has been copied to the first recovery device it can then be replicated off-site. Due to the behavior of WAN links, the CDP system needs to deal with variances in the available bandwidth. So it has to be able to "get behind" and "catch up" when these conditions change. With some systems you can define an acceptable lag time (from a few seconds to an hour or more), which translates into the RPO of the replicated system. The CDP system sends all of the writes that happened as one large batch. If an individual block was modified several times during the time period, you can specify that only the last change is sent in a process known as "write folding." This obviously means that the disaster recovery copy won't have the same level of recovery granularity as the on-site recovery system, but it may also mean the difference between a system that works and one that doesn't.

Modern continuous data protection systems also offers a built-in, long-term storage alternative. You can pick a short time range (e.g., from 12:00:00 pm to 12:00:30 pm every day) and tell the CDP system to keep only the blocks it needs to maintain only those recovery points, and to delete the blocks that were changed in between. Users who take application-level snapshots typically coordinate them to coincide with their recovery points for consistency purposes. This deletion of extraneous changes allows the CDP system to retain data for much longer periods of time. For longer retention periods, it's also possible to back up one of these recovery points to tape and then expire it from disk. Many companies use all three approaches: retention of every change for a few days, hourly recovery points for a week or so, then daily recovery points after that, followed by tape copies after 90 days or so.

Continuous data protection and recoveries

The true wonder of continuous data protection is how it handles a recovery. A CDP system can instantaneously present a LUN to whatever application needs to use it for recovery or testing, rolled forward or backward to whatever point in time desired. (As noted, many users choose to roll the recovery volume back to a point in time when they created an application consistent image. Although this means they'll lose any changes between that point in time and the current time, many prefer rolling back to a known consistent image rather than going through the crash recovery process.)

Depending on the product, the recovery LUN may be the actual recovery volume (rolled forward or backward), a virtual volume designed mainly for testing a restore, or something in the middle where the recovery volume is presented to the application as if it has already been rolled forward or backward, when in reality the actual rolling forward or backward is happening in the background. Some systems can simultaneously present multiple points in time from the same recovery volume.

Once the original production system has been repaired, the recovery process is reversed. The recovery volume is used to rebuild the original production volume by replicating the data back to its original location. (If the system was merely down and didn't need to be replaced, it's usually possible just to update it to the current point in time by sending over only the changes that have happened since the outage.) With the original volume brought up to date, the application can be moved back to its original location and the direction of replication reversed.

Compare that description of a typical CDP-based recovery scenario to the recovery process required by a traditional backup system, and you should get a good idea of why continuous data protection is the future of backup and recovery.

EDITOR'S TIP: Click here to read this next part of this guide on near-CDP.

W. Curtis Preston is an executive editor in TechTarget's Storage Media Group and an independent backup expert.

This article was previously published in Storage magazine.


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