Service Oriented Data Protection -- FalconStor
Jim McNiel, CEO and President of FalsonStor, and I had a rather lively conversation about virtualized environments, the progression some organizations are making from having all of their systems on-premise and what happens when backup and quick recovery are not part of their plans.
Backup doesn't work any more
It is Jim's view that traditional backup strategies don't always work as expected. There is simply too much data being generated in too many places for a simple tape or even disk-based backup to successfully help an organization overcome a failure. It takes too long to find needed data and recover it using those mechanisms.Will "snapshots" solve the problem?
An approach proposed by some suppliers is to take "snapshots" of the running environment on a regular basis and recover using the most recent snapshot. Then it is far easier to recover the few things that were not captured in that snapshot.Jim would say that even that may not work in a rapidly moving eCommerce application because applications are no longer built as monolithic blocks of code running on a single system. Modern applications are built differently. They are distributed, multi-tier and are built using "services," each of which maintains its own data store.
Jim would assert that a centralized backup solution, all by itself, wouldn't be able to capture a snapshot of everything in a timely fashion.
FalconStor's approach
FalsonStor would suggest that a comprehensive recovery plan is needed today that includes backup optimization, data deduplication as well as storage virtualization. This technology should be applied to each layer of a multi-tier application.Here's what FalconStor says about business continuity/disaster recovery
Business data is one of the most critical aspects of operations and revenue generation. Downtime caused by natural or manmade disasters is unacceptable. To ensure that operations are always running, you must prepare for and prevent data loss caused by software or hardware failures through careful business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) planning.
FalconStor BC/DR solutions enable non-disruptive DR with hardware independence, scalability, and flexibility, for cost-effective and comprehensive data protection across your business. Our solutions help ensure seamless business operations at local or remote sites in the event of downtime or disaster. By keeping replicas and snapshots readily available at the DR site, these solutions enable quick and simple data and system recovery to any point in time:
- Enable 99.999% availability
- Quickly recover files, databases, systems, and entire sites
- Reduce primary storage capacity requirements by 50% with storage virtualization
- Slash replication costs by up to 90% with WAN-optimized replication
- Eliminate redundant data and shrink your backup repository by as much as 95% through MicroScan™ technology
FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) and FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) offer intelligent storage virtualization and an "always-on" approach to storage and data management, ensuring that all components are redundant and can seamlessly react to any form of disruption. Innovative data protection features and application-level integration enable recovery from any data loss or corruption instantly, ensuring the highest levels of data availability. An open architecture facilitates lower-cost hardware deployments at the DR site, including the ability to leverage existing resources within your environment. Integration with VMware and Microsoft virtualization environments enables seamless operational failover between sites and fast, cost-effective physical-to-virtual (P2V) recovery.