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WHITE PAPERSOLUTION: DISASTER RECOVERYTECHNOLOGY: REMOTE REPLICATIONDisaster Recovery Strategies:Business Continuity throughRemote Backup ReplicationENSURING IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO YOUR BUSINESS CRITICAL DATAEvery organization has critical data that it can‟t live without. When a disaster strikes, how long canyour business survive without access to its critical data? Weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes? Whencreating a disaster recovery plan, one of the most important questions you need to ask is “Howaccessible is my backup data?” Your response to that will typically supply the answers to your othercritical questions, such as can you even recover if a catastrophe brings your site down? If you can,how long will it take you to recover?The ability to answer these questions in a favorable manner requires that organizations do morethan just simply back up their data. They need to have high confidence in the integrity and reliabilityof their backups, so they can actually restore from them. They need to have copies of their backupsstored in a secure offsite location to ensure that they don‟t become compromised by the samedisaster that brings down their main site. Lastly, and one of the most overlooked conditions, is thatthey need to be able to access and restore from those offsite backups in a timely manner.While a number of backup and disaster recovery solutions address some of these issues, only diskto-disk backup with remote replication to disk at another location addresses all of these issues in amanner that enables organizations to be assured that they‟ll have immediate access to their datawhen a disaster strikes.White Paper: Remote Replication1 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.

Solution: Disaster RecoveryTechnology: Remote ReplicationCRITICAL DATA ACCESSIBILITY KEYScated, which in itself can take significant timedepending on the cataloging system and physical organization of the tape sets. Once located,the tapes have to be physically transferred backto the restoration location before the actual restore process can even begin. From start to finish, the whole process to restore from tapemight take days or weeks.TAPE BACKUPTape backup has long been the traditional methodfor preserving an organization‟s critical data. Unfortunately, tape backup strikes out in terms ofaddressing the key factors of accessibility; integrity, off-site storage, and time to recover. Low Reliability - Tape backup does not providehigh confidence in terms of reliability or integrity. Organizations report failures of anywherebetween 20 to 70 percent when attempting torestore from tape backups. Tape backup management is also a labor intensive undertaking.Additionally, tape manufacturers recommendthat tape media be replaced every two to threeyears.DISK-TO-DISK-TO-TAPETo address many of the reliability and labor intensive aspects of tape, many organizations haveturned to disk-to-disk solutions. However, these solutions typically rely on tape backups for long termor off-site archival. As a result, in terms of offsitedisaster protection, these solutions ultimately don‟tfare any better than tape in terms of addressingthe key factors for reliable, immediate accessibility.Labor Intensive and Costly Offsite Storage Assuming you can rely on the integrity of atape backup, it can be used as an offsite disaster proof solution. However, the tapes have tobe physically transported to an offsite locationand manually cataloged to enable future retrieval and recovery. To eliminate the hassle ofthis physical effort, some organizations contract a third-party company to handle thephysical transport and storage of the tapes.CLOUD SERVICESRecently, backup cloud services have become apopular trend for consumers and even somesmaller businesses. While cloud services do address some reliability and accessibility issues quitewell, their inherent design limits their ability to provide the needed level of immediate accessibility. Slow Time to Recover- Before being able to recover from a tape stored in an offsite location,the correct set of tapes first need to be lo-White Paper: Remote Replication2Potential High Reliability - Depending on thecloud service and actual infrastructure, backupcloud services hold the promise of being able toprovide reliable backup and restore. In terms ofintegrity, a cloud service should be able to pro- 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.

Solution: Disaster RecoveryTechnology: Remote Replicationvide the same level of integrity as a disk-todisk solution, but without the need to go totape for off-site archival. High Reliability – Disk based storage has longproven to be more reliable than tape, especiallywhen implemented with a RAID system, which hasthe ability to further increase storage integrity andavailability through disk redundancy.Automated Offsite Storage – One of the majorbenefits of a backup cloud service is its transparent, automated nature. Data is automatiAutomated Offsite Storage – Replication providescally backed up and archived at an offsite,the ability to automatically and transparently transhosted data centerfer copies of an organizawithout any user intertion‟s backups over thevention.Internet or a WAN to its“We have a requirementto archive all of our backups.own offsite disk storageSlow Time to RecoveryTo meet that requirement,appliance, providing re– The main disadvanwe backup our servers on onedundant, easily accessitage of a cloud serviceRevinetix Disk Backup Applianceble backups of criticalfor backup is the slowand then replicate our backupsdata.time to recovery.to another Revinetix applianceWhile it might be fineat our disaster recovery site.” Fast Time to Recoveryfor recovering a fewGrant Baker– Disk-to-Disk-to-Disk,files, transferring theSenior Systems & Security AdministratorUniversity of Virginia at Wisewith automated replicabackup files for entiretion to an offsite locaservers over the Intertion, provides organizanet can take days totions an ideal way to quickly access and reweeks, depending on an organization‟s Intercover critical backups when disasters occur.net bandwidth and connection speeds.Not only does it provide immediate access toDISK-TO-DISK-TO-DISK REMOTE REPLICATIONoffsite stored data, as a disk-based solution itOnly a disk-to-disk backup solution with autoprovides transfer rates of up to seven timesmated replication to an offsite location addressesfaster than tape. Data can also be recoveredthe key accessibility factors of high reliability, autoand transferred simultaneously to multiplemated offsite storage, and fast time to recovery.servers without sacrificing speed. White Paper: Remote Replication3 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.

Solution: Disaster RecoveryTechnology: Remote ReplicationEnterprise Class Replicationintuitive setup wizard and then it‟s ready to beginbacking up your servers, desktops, laptops andother devices. It is Microsoft Active Directory aware,which makes it easy to identify and schedule whichdevices you want it to automatically back up. Thewhole setup and configuring process can be typically completed in less than two hours. Once it‟s upand running, it essentially manages itself so you todon‟t have to expend any manpower managingyour backups.A variety of replication strategies and technologiesexist in terms of implementation, replication process, and transfer of data between the data sourceand the target. As a result, when choosing a diskto-disk-to-disk replication offering, organizationsneed to evaluate the solution in a number of areas, including ease of setup and management,storage capacity optimization, bandwidth optimization, OS and application support, fast and flexibleaccessibility and total cost of ownership.Adding off-site replication is as simple as deployinga second Revinetix Sentio appliance to an off-sitedisaster recovery location and then configuring thatappliance as a secondary or replication appliance.Revinetix employs what is referred to as activepassive replication, where the on-site or primaryappliance actively backs up your system‟s data andthen passively replicates that data to the offsitesecondary backup appliance.Built on its scalable, high-performing enterpriseclass data protection appliances, Revinetix addresses all of these key areas to deliver optimaldisaster recovery that leverages easy-to-deploy,automated disk-to-disk-to-disk replication.EASE OF SETUP AND MANAGEMENTDisaster recovery offerings from Revinetix arebased on its „all-in-one‟ rack mount Sentio line ofdisk backup appliances. Each appliance is builtwith best of breed technology, which includes dualIntel Core 2 Duo Processors, Gigabit Ethernetcontrollers, hardware RAID (Redundant Array ofInexpensive Disks), high speed Serial ATA (SATA)disks and dual-redundant power supplies on the2U and larger units.Storage Capacity OptimizationEven though a single Revinetix Sentio backup appliance can support up to 70TB of data, the solutionprovides a variety of capabilities for optimizing storage capacity. One of the most compelling of theseis its data deduplication capability. Data deduplication simply involves identifying duplicate copies ofdata, recording where each of those duplicates isstored, and then only storing a single copy of thatdata. Depending on how much duplicate data resides on an organization‟s servers, deduplicationAs turnkey solutions, the Revinetix Sentio appliances are easy to deploy. You connect the appliance to your LAN, assign it an IP address, run theWhite Paper: Remote Replication4 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.