WHITE PAPER

SOLUTION: DISASTER RECOVERY

TECHNOLOGY: REMOTE REPLICATION

Disaster Recovery Strategies:

Business Continuity through
Remote Backup Replication

ENSURING IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO YOUR BUSINESS CRITICAL DATA

Every organization has critical data that it can‟t live without. When a disaster strikes, how long can
your business survive without access to its critical data? Weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes? When
creating a disaster recovery plan, one of the most important questions you need to ask is “How
accessible is my backup data?” Your response to that will typically supply the answers to your other
critical 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 more
than just simply back up their data. They need to have high confidence in the integrity and reliability
of their backups, so they can actually restore from them. They need to have copies of their backups
stored in a secure offsite location to ensure that they don‟t become compromised by the same
disaster that brings down their main site. Lastly, and one of the most overlooked conditions, is that
they 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 disk-
to-disk backup with remote replication to disk at another location addresses all of these issues in a
manner that enables organizations to be assured that they‟ll have immediate access to their data
when a disaster strikes.

White Paper: Remote Replication 1 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

CRITICAL DATA ACCESSIBILITY KEYS cated, which in itself can take significant time
depending on the cataloging system and physi-
TAPE BACKUP cal organization of the tape sets. Once located,
Tape backup has long been the traditional method the tapes have to be physically transferred back
for preserving an organization‟s critical data. Un- to the restoration location before the actual re-
fortunately, tape backup strikes out in terms of store process can even begin. From start to fin-
addressing the key factors of accessibility; integ- ish, the whole process to restore from tape
rity, off-site storage, and time to recover. might take days or weeks.

 Low Reliability - Tape backup does not provide DISK-TO-DISK-TO-TAPE

high confidence in terms of reliability or integ-
To address many of the reliability and labor inten-
rity. Organizations report failures of anywhere
sive aspects of tape, many organizations have
between 20 to 70 percent when attempting to
turned to disk-to-disk solutions. However, these so-
restore from tape backups. Tape backup man-
lutions typically rely on tape backups for long term
agement is also a labor intensive undertaking.
or off-site archival. As a result, in terms of offsite
Additionally, tape manufacturers recommend
disaster protection, these solutions ultimately don‟t
that tape media be replaced every two to three
fare any better than tape in terms of addressing
years.
the key factors for reliable, immediate accessibility.
 Labor Intensive and Costly Offsite Storage -
CLOUD SERVICES
Assuming you can rely on the integrity of a
tape backup, it can be used as an offsite disas- Recently, backup cloud services have become a
ter proof solution. However, the tapes have to popular trend for consumers and even some
be physically transported to an offsite location smaller businesses. While cloud services do ad-
and manually cataloged to enable future re- dress some reliability and accessibility issues quite
trieval and recovery. To eliminate the hassle of well, their inherent design limits their ability to pro-
this physical effort, some organizations con- vide the needed level of immediate accessibility.
tract a third-party company to handle the
 Potential High Reliability - Depending on the
physical transport and storage of the tapes.
cloud service and actual infrastructure, backup
 Slow Time to Recover- Before being able to re- cloud services hold the promise of being able to
cover from a tape stored in an offsite location, provide reliable backup and restore. In terms of
the correct set of tapes first need to be lo- integrity, a cloud service should be able to pro-

White Paper: Remote Replication 2 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

vide the same level of integrity as a disk-to- High Reliability – Disk based storage has long
disk solution, but without the need to go to proven to be more reliable than tape, especially
tape for off-site archival. when implemented with a RAID system, which has
the ability to further increase storage integrity and
 Automated Offsite Storage – One of the major
availability through disk redundancy.
benefits of a backup cloud service is its trans-
parent, automated nature. Data is automati- Automated Offsite Storage – Replication provides
cally backed up and archived at an offsite, the ability to automatically and transparently trans-
hosted data center fer copies of an organiza-
without any user inter- tion‟s backups over the
vention. “We have a requirement Internet or a WAN to its
 Slow Time to Recovery to archive all of our backups. own offsite disk storage
– The main disadvan- To meet that requirement, appliance, providing re-
we backup our servers on one dundant, easily accessi-
tage of a cloud service
Revinetix Disk Backup Appliance ble backups of critical
for backup is the slow
and then replicate our backups data.
time to recovery. to another Revinetix appliance
While it might be fine at our disaster recovery site.”
for recovering a few  Fast Time to Recovery
Grant Baker
files, transferring the Senior Systems & Security Administrator
– Disk-to-Disk-to-Disk,
backup files for entire University of Virginia at Wise with automated replica-
servers over the Inter- tion to an offsite loca-
net can take days to tion, provides organiza-
weeks, depending on an organization‟s Inter- tions an ideal way to quickly access and re-
net bandwidth and connection speeds. cover critical backups when disasters occur.
Not only does it provide immediate access to
DISK-TO-DISK-TO-DISK REMOTE REPLICATION
offsite stored data, as a disk-based solution it
Only a disk-to-disk backup solution with auto- provides transfer rates of up to seven times
mated replication to an offsite location addresses faster than tape. Data can also be recovered
the key accessibility factors of high reliability, auto- and transferred simultaneously to multiple
mated offsite storage, and fast time to recovery. servers without sacrificing speed.

White Paper: Remote Replication 3 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

Enterprise Class Replication intuitive setup wizard and then it‟s ready to begin
backing up your servers, desktops, laptops and
A variety of replication strategies and technologies
other devices. It is Microsoft Active Directory aware,
exist in terms of implementation, replication proc-
which makes it easy to identify and schedule which
ess, and transfer of data between the data source
devices you want it to automatically back up. The
and the target. As a result, when choosing a disk-
whole setup and configuring process can be typi-
to-disk-to-disk replication offering, organizations
cally completed in less than two hours. Once it‟s up
need to evaluate the solution in a number of ar-
and running, it essentially manages itself so you to
eas, including ease of setup and management,
don‟t have to expend any manpower managing
storage capacity optimization, bandwidth optimiza-
your backups.
tion, OS and application support, fast and flexible
accessibility and total cost of ownership. Adding off-site replication is as simple as deploying
a second Revinetix Sentio appliance to an off-site
Built on its scalable, high-performing enterprise
disaster recovery location and then configuring that
class data protection appliances, Revinetix ad-
appliance as a secondary or replication appliance.
dresses all of these key areas to deliver optimal
Revinetix employs what is referred to as active-
disaster recovery that leverages easy-to-deploy,
passive replication, where the on-site or primary
automated disk-to-disk-to-disk replication.
appliance actively backs up your system‟s data and
EASE OF SETUP AND MANAGEMENT then passively replicates that data to the offsite
Disaster recovery offerings from Revinetix are secondary backup appliance.
based on its „all-in-one‟ rack mount Sentio line of Storage Capacity Optimization
disk backup appliances. Each appliance is built
Even though a single Revinetix Sentio backup appli-
with best of breed technology, which includes dual
ance can support up to 70TB of data, the solution
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processors, Gigabit Ethernet
provides a variety of capabilities for optimizing stor-
controllers, hardware RAID (Redundant Array of
age capacity. One of the most compelling of these
Inexpensive Disks), high speed Serial ATA (SATA)
is its data deduplication capability. Data deduplica-
disks and dual-redundant power supplies on the
tion simply involves identifying duplicate copies of
2U and larger units.
data, recording where each of those duplicates is
As turnkey solutions, the Revinetix Sentio appli- stored, and then only storing a single copy of that
ances are easy to deploy. You connect the appli- data. Depending on how much duplicate data re-
ance to your LAN, assign it an IP address, run the sides on an organization‟s servers, deduplication

White Paper: Remote Replication 4 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

can provide anywhere between a 20x to 300x To facilitate the restoration of individual emails,
space savings. Revinetix also provides a native Microsoft Ex-
Bandwidth Optimization change Server Agent. This provides the ability to
view, select and restore individual emails or mail-
Just as data deduplication saves on storage con-
boxes from live Exchange server databases based
sumption, it also optimizes bandwidth usage, but
on search criteria. This can be a significant help in
Revinetix goes a step further to optimize band-
addressing government email retention guidelines,
width usage by transfer-
such as Sarbanes-Oxley,
ring changes in backup
“The Revinetix appliance was HIPAA, and other regula-
data at the byte-level
extremely easy to setup to do backups. tions.
rather than the file-
level. Solutions that em-
Setting up a second one for Revinetix also provides
replication was incredibly simple an add-on SQL database
ploy file-level transfers
and requires very little maintenance.” agent that enables the
have to transfer the
complete file over the Sam Robinson backup of live, open SQL
IT Backup Technician
WAN even if only a databases. SQL Server
iFreedom Direct
small change is made backups can be sched-
uled as full, incremental,
to a file. By working at byte-level, Revinetix appli-
or differential backups, providing organizations
ances only replicate the actual bytes of data that
granular protection of their databases and file
changed. This considerably minimizes the amount
groups.
of data that needs to be transferred during a repli-
cation process, making it the quickest and most Fast and Flexible Accessibility
efficient data transfer method for replication. Restoring files from a Revinetix Sentio backup ap-
OS and Application Support pliance designated as primary is as simple as log-
For complete disaster recovery, organizations ging in, searching or browsing for the files to be re-
need a solution that can backup and replicate stored, and then point, click and restore. When re-
their entire server and client environment. De- storing from a remote replication appliance,
signed to support heterogeneous environments, Revinetix provides a variety of options to ensure
Revinetix Disk Backup Appliances support Win- that organizations have fast, flexible access to their
dows, Netware, Linux, MAC OS-X, BSD, AIX, SCO critical data. The first is to simply promote the re-
Unix, and Solaris devices. mote, secondary replication appliance to a primary

White Paper: Remote Replication 5 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

appliance and then restore over the WAN connec- backup and recovery capabilities as standard fea-
tion. However, depending on network connection tures in each of its appliances, Revinetix helps or-
speeds, this might not be the best option for full ganizations achieve the lowest total cost of owner-
server or site restorations. ship (TCO) possible.
In such cases, it can be faster to use Revinetix‟
Customer Experiences with Replication
bare metal restoration capabilities to simply re-
store to new, like hardware at the offsite disaster on Revinetix Disk Backup Appliances
recovery location. As another option for speeding
iFreedom Direct
the restoration process, organizations can remove
the hot swappable SATA drives in their offsite Revi- iFreedom Direct, a Utah based mortgage broker,
netix replication appliance and insert them into an creates a tremendous number of documents. Be-
on-site appliance for local restoration from that cause of the legal requirements of being a mort-
appliance. gage broker, they need to have ready access to
documents on current and recent transactions, as
Total Cost of Ownership
well as occasional access to much older transac-
Unlike most other offerings, Revinetix provides a tions. They have developed a comprehensive dis-
complete enterprise-class disaster recovery solu- aster recovery plan which utilizes Revinetix Data
tion at a price affordable for small to medium size Protection Appliances as the keystone of the plan.
enterprise businesses. Revinetix doesn‟t charge
iFreedom Direct backs up a variety of virtual and
per client or per site license fees, or per client re-
physical servers from two Utah offices to a single
newal fees. Rather, it employs a capacity license
Revinetix Data Protection Appliance located in their
fee. This means that with a single Revinetix appli-
main office which then replicates the backup data
ance, an organization can choose to back up one
to a disaster recovery site in San Diego across a 6
device or hundreds of devices, limited only by the
Mbps data link.
storage capacity of their purchased appliance.
This allows organizations to perform backup, repli- “The Revinetix appliance was extremely easy to
cation, and recovery services for virtually an unlim- setup to do backups. Setting up a second one for
ited number of servers, desktops, laptop and even replication was incredibly simple and requires very
virtual machines (VMs). By basing licensing solely little maintenance,” Sam Robinson, IT Backup
on capacity and providing its entire advanced Technician stated.

White Paper: Remote Replication 6 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Solution: Disaster Recovery
Technology: Remote Replication

University of Virginia – Wise automatically. Now we can leave on Fridays at

4:00 PM. What‟s not to love about that?”
The University of Virginia – Wise (UVA-Wise), a
public, four-year residential college located in Critical Data Accessibility
southwestern Virginia, uses Revinetix Data Protec- When You Need It
tion Appliances to replicate their backup informa-
Employing enterprise class disk-to-disk-to-disk repli-
tion from their site in Wise, VA to their disaster re-
cation, Revinetix helps ensure that you have imme-
covery site located at the UVA data center in Char-
diate access to your critical data even when disas-
lottesville, VA. UVA utilizes a 1Gbps data link be-
ters strike. It provides the reliability and immediate
tween sites to replicate the backup of about 25
accessibility you need to minimize downtime and
university servers. These servers include a variety
restore your critical data
of Microsoft Windows and
fast. As a turnkey disaster
Linux servers, including “Using tape, we stayed up recovery appliance, it's
Microsoft Exchange and past 11:00 PM every Friday night fast and easy to deploy,
SQL databases. to do our backups.
With Revinetix, and its automated backup
“The Revinetix backup
everything is backed-up and replication frees up
servers work very well.
and replicated automatically. your IT team to focus their
We have a requirement to
Now we can leave efforts elsewhere. It opti-
archive all of our back- on Fridays at 4:00 PM. mizes storage capacity
ups. To meet that re- What’s not to love about that?” and bandwidth usage, and
quirement, we backup
Grant Baker can backup heterogene-
our servers on one Revi- Senior Systems & Security Administrator
University of Virginia at Wise ous environments. It pro-
netix Disk Backup Appli-
vides all the advanced fea-
ance and then replicate
tures and capabilities of an enterprise class appli-
our backups to another Revinetix appliance at our
ance, but with a lower total cost of ownership with
disaster recovery site,” says Grant Baker, Senior
one low price, and no client or site license fees. As
Systems & Security Administrator at UVA-Wise.
the leader in data life management, Revinetix deliv-
Grant adds, “Using tape, we stayed up past 11:00 ers the business continuity you need to ensure that
PM every Friday night to do our backups. With you always have immediate access to your critical
Revinetix, everything is backed-up and replicated data where you need it and when you need it.

w w w .rev in eti x. co m
888.264.5116 sa l es @ rev i net i x. com

White Paper: Remote Replication 7 © 2010 Revinetix, Inc. All rights reserved.