More Organizations Put Application and Disaster Recoveries on Fast Track Using CDP

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It is no longer a question of if organizations are going to use disk as a backup target but a matter of what form of disk-based backup are they going to use. File servers (NAS) and virtual tape libraries (VTLs) are two common forms of disk-based solutions that organizations deploy but these approaches fail to take full advantage of the robust recovery capabilities that disk can provide. It is for this reason that more organizations are leveraging continuous data protection (CDP) to fast track their application recoveries.

CDP incorporates disk into the overall backup and recovery in a method that differs from either VTLs or NAS. Rather than simply serving as a target for backup software, CDP takes more full advantage of disk's benefits. CDP:

  • Initially takes a full copy of the production data
  • Continuously captures or tracks data modifications to the production data
  • Stores these changes independent of the production data
But the key differentiator of CDP is that CDP gives organizations the flexibility to immediately recover applications without first requiring the backup software to recover the application data. This is possible because CDP keeps a copy of the production data in a state that is recognizable to the application unlike backup software which stores data in a format that requires the backup software to recover it. Further, CDP enables organizations to recover data to any previous point-in-time, even as short as a few seconds prior to when the application fails or data corruption occurs.

It is for these reasons that more organizations are selecting CDP as their preferred way to implement disk in their environment. Consider the following real life examples.

The Township (the Township of Scugog is approximately 65 kms northeast of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) of Scugog's infrastructure lead, Shawn Mears, was doing once-a-day backups of the Oracle database that contained the Township's financial application data. This approach left its financial data exposed for up to 24 hours and forced him to rely on recoveries that could takes hours, even days, to complete.

As he looked to redesign the Township's backup infrastructure, rather than just settling for faster backups or recoveries using VTLs or NAS, he opted for near-instantaneous recoveries using the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector solution. Now he can do near-real time recoveries of his Oracale database and says, "The FalconStor solution did everything that we hoped it would and it was a pretty painless procedure to implement."

Strand Associates, an engineering firm based in Madison, WI, had individual tape backups in each of its 11 offices across the United States that were handled by an engineer or secretary in each office. This situation was untenable in the mind of Justin Bell, Strand's network administrator. Backup jobs were failing, tapes were being misplaced or lost and central IT was chasing its tail trying to troubleshoot problems in this distributed environment.

Bell came to the realization that he had to do more than just improve his backup and recovery situation across these different locations, he had to recover data as quickly as possible without burdening the IT staff in the central IT office or individuals at the remote offices.

He too deployed the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector at all of these remote offices which completely changed his company's view of recovery. The company used to do up to 800 restore jobs annually with each jobs taking hours to complete. Now he says, "Using FalconStor Continuous Data Protector, it takes just minutes to perform one restore."

Organizations are rightfully looking to adopt disk-based backup solutions as part of their backup redesigns. But these organizations recognized they can do much more with disk than just deploy it as a backup target. They figured out that a CDP solution such as the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector does much more than just increase backup success rates or shorten backup windows; it provides them with the assurance that backup now works while putting them on a fast track to local application recoveries and remote disaster recoveries.

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