· Differences between backup & archival

Backup: The backup market has evolved over the past several years. It is widely accepted that backups today should be Fast, Easy, Reliable, Cost Effective and non-intrusive - backups should be disk to disk. Ideally, backups should occur in real-time and minimise data loss to no longer than 15 minutes. After all, who wants to lose 8 hours of data per user after a crash, corruption or problem? Click here to read the Voice & Data article on disk backup vs. tape backup. (1.05mb PDF)

Archival: The process of moving data off-site. Traditionally this has been tape, though today more companies are looking at and implementing USB disks (typically smaller companies or SMBs) or replicating data to an off-site repository.

Historically, most companies have used tape for both backup and archival. However, while it is now quite evident that tape is an ideal archival medium, it is less than satisfactory as a backup technology. Several years ago we saw the introduction of VTLs (Virtual Tape Libraries), however it quickly became apparent that these simply moved the pain to another area on the network - they did not solve the fundamental problem of backup or more importantly, recovery - after all, the only reason we backup is to be able to restore at some stage in the future.

Real-Time Recovery is a new market segment that delivers solutions to the backup and disaster recovery problems that have plagued companies for years. StorageCraft ShadowProtect has quickly evolved to become the world leading Real-Time Recovery solution for Windows™ servers. StorageCraft ShadowProtect is based on the core engine (StorageCraft Volume Snapshot Manager) which is recognised as the world leading live imaging engine for Windows™ environments. It has well over 1,000,000 installations around the globe.

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· Archiving with StorageCraft

StorageCraft ShadowProtect focuses on solving the backup, recovery and disaster recovery problems for organisations of all sizes. StorageCraft recognise that most companies will already have a significant investment in tape archival products, therefore our model is based on using disk to disk to save the real-time backups to a local Image Repository (disk) and from there, companies use their existing tape infrastructure to move iether the data or the backup images to tape. This therefore reduces the required tape archival software to one license, and no agents or options are required.

Of course, with the introduction of high speed data links, it is becoming more common for organisations to replicate their data to an off-site data centre or recovery centre where the backups are stored for long-term archival on either disk or tape or a combination of both. StorageCraft make this possible and non-intrusive as we have two technologies embedded within ShadowProtect:

• Continuous Incrementals technology - which enables just one full backup to be performed, and from that moment onwards, only 15 minute (sector based) incremental backups (small amounts of data) are sent over a secure link to the remote data centre, enabling off-site backup, recovery and disaster recovery.
• Self-Healing Incrementals - this advanced technology automatically fixes a broken or corrupted incremental chain to help ensure maximum integrity of backups. StorageCraft ShadowProtect will automatically integrate the previous incremental image to ensure it is available and intact, then and only then does it perform a new incremental image. If it identifies a potential problem (e.g. the previous image is not available or the previous image is corrupted), ShadowProtect will automatically Self-Heal the chain by performing a DIFFERENTIAL backup (the difference between the full backup and this point in time). This therefore is substantially smaller than performing a new full backup and transferring it over the internet.
• ImageManager - this powerful technology enables customers to perform advanced processing of the image chain at their local site. For example, images can be set to collapse all incrementals into a new base image on a pre-defined schedule in a process that is commonly termed "Synthetic Full Backups."

Note: For enterprise or remote, off-site backups, StorageCraft also have an Enterprise Version of the ImageManager technology. This is separately licensed and designed to handle multiple image chains from multiple remote sites. Customers need to utilise their own replication technology for moving images from a remote site to the remote data centre or recovery centre. Click here to find out which partners have licensed the Enterprise ImageManager product to deliver off-site backup and disaster recovery.

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· Testing backups

A challenge facing most organisations is knowing that your backups have worked correctly. How confident are you today that if you had a serious crash, that your tape backup from last night is 100% accurate and recoverable?

Using ShadowProtect, proving your backups have been created correctly is as simple as a few mous clicks. You have the option to either mount the images or use VMware to bring up a functional, ExactState™ image of your operating system, databases or data volumes into either a production or non-production environment.

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· Disaster Recovery with ShadowProtect

A key advantage of ShadowProtect is its inbuilt disaster recovery capabilities. Using the included (free) Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) technology, you are able to perform a bare metal restore to the same, totally different hardware or virtual environments (e.g. using VMware or Microsoft Virtualisation technology). In addition, with the integration between StorageCraft ShadowProtect and VMware, you can quickly migrate a physical machine to a virtual machine with a couple of key strokes. In fact, VMware has OEM'd the StorageCraft Volume Snapshot Manager engine, which helps to reinforce the capabilities and relationship between StorageCraft and VMware.

Click here to watch a 3 minute Flash Demonstration of using ShadowProtect and VMware Workstation.

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· Advanced capabilities

What makes ShadowProtect so reliable?

StorageCraft uses a technology called ExactState™ imaging. This technology takes an ExactState image of the entire volume at the sector level. As it is an ExactState image, when it is restored, it is restored back exactly the same as the original.

Most backup products work at the file level, backing up individual files, and this is a key reason for the generally accepted level of unreliability of traditional file based backup products and slow performance.

VSS Snapshots - Real-Time imaging of databases and operating systems

StorageCraft is one of hte few technologies who have written their solution to work with Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadowcopy Services) through the Microsoft VSS API. VSS is the imaging engine built into most new Microsoft operating systems and databases (including Server 2003, Server 2008, XP, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, SQL 2005, SBS, SharePoint, etc). By integrating StorageCraft ShadowProtect so tightly with Microsoft VSS, ShadowProtect provides the ability to take non-intrusive, reliable backups of any VSS server or databases with minimal impact on users, servers or networks.

Non-VSS Backups

StorageCraft ShadowProtect also has the ability to use its own inbuilt snapshot technology for backing up non-VSS operating systems and databases.

Granular File Level Recovery

Due to the powerful mounting capabilities built into StorageCraft ShadowProtect, a file can be restored to any ExactState™ of any of hte incremental backup images in literally seconds. Additionally, when mounting a volume it is a read only volume, which helps to ensure maximum integrity of the images. The mounted volume also retains full NTFS permissions and security, which means that users can only view their own files - ensuring maximum security and privacy of sensitive data.

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