Any storage architect or
administrator that has ever dared to accept the challenge of engineering or
re-designing their company’s backup and recovery environment has undoubtedly
discovered that he or she has had to sacrifice functionality or features based
on the practical limits of their budget. Reasons for this vary from vendor to
vendor, but mostly it comes down to how many backup and recovery software
options are they willing to pay for? Most vendors offer reasonably good
licensing for the core software, but once you step outside of that realm, some
of the most basics features are not included. Some features I have seen omitted
from what I now consider core functionality include:
- Support
for disk-based backups and VTL’s (cost and quantities are very dependent
on the specific vendor implementation) - Any
type of Single Instance Storage, DeDuplication or Compression - Any
Encryption technology, be they Hardware or Software - Advanced
Server and Application level backup agents (Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint,
Notes, Synthetic full support) - Bare
Metal Recovery - Granular Recovery of a given applications set of
data
This list is obviously not an
all-encompassing one but it serves to demonstrate that these are features that
are generally not typically included in the core software of the major backup
vendors. However, it does demonstrate the need for backup architects to perform
a significant amount of pre-planning and research to understand what they are
omitting when they give up a feature for price if it’s not included in the core
software.
In my previous life, I have had
experience in decisions like this, and they usually turn out less than positive
for the end-user. About 90% of the time it was due to the vendor or the
end-user really not understanding what they are losing when they give up a
feature.
In that respect, wouldn’t it be
great if you could tear down those budgetary ramparts and say, “I want to cover
my backup infrastructure end-to-end regardless.”? Well, don’t fret. There is a
solution out there which oddly enough doesn’t nickel and dime your budgets to
death. Asigra TeleVaulting provides an all-encompassing backup and recovery
solution, that provides all the layers of backup and recovery functionality
needed to ensure that you can simply and easily achieve those backup SLA’s
without breaking the bank on licenses or manpower resources.
Asigra gives companies the flexibility
to maintain this environment on your own, store the data to one of these
emerging storage clouds, or even outsource it by using one of Asigra’s many
MSP’s (Managed Service Providers) to assume the responsibility for the backups.
Asigra Televualting includes many of the features for which other vendors
charge for “free” as part of its core software offering. At the high level Televaulting
includes:
- Disk-Based
system (No need to worry or deal with physical tape or multiple copies of
those tapes, removes all those operational headaches) - Agentless
operations (No need to manage nor maintain those pesky client/server
agents) - Inclusion
of space savings features (Deduplication for both DS-System storage as
well as replicated backups with all data compressed after it is
deduplicated) - Encryption
functionality (AES 256 is included standard with the product) - Embedded
compliance support (FCRP, SOX, HIPPA, PCI-DSS) - Full
System Recoveries offered as part of the package (Standard system recovery
procedures apply) - Granular
recovery of databases as well as email stores (down to the message level,
with the appropriate software) - CDP (TIVO for your infrastructure)
This is just a summary of the robust features
that are included with Asigra’s TeleVaulting product. So, the next time you are
looking to re-architect or create a new backup and recovery environment, keep
Asigra Televaulting in mind as it potentially offers some significant ROI and
TCO for your corporation. Also, keep in mind that when you start to consider
the trade-offs of sacrificing features that you need to maintain a robust
backup environment because of their costly add-on features, there are unique
solutions out there that can help side-step this concern.