Cloud Backup
AddVantage Cloud Backup Service
The EACS AddVantage Cloud Backup Service is a managed backup service that removes the pain of traditional on-site tape based backup and restore solutions and delivers several important benefits:
- The backup is disk based and eliminates the performance and reliability issues associated with tape backups and restores – backups exceeding the window impacting production; key data not being backed up; long time to restore; constantly backing up unchanged data; unreliable media etc. You can be assured that when you need to restore your data the process will actually work.
- Your backed up data will be available on disk both locally and off-site at a secure and resilient datacentre. The movement of data off site is automatic requiring no user intervention. Restoration can be from either source; local source recovery will be at LAN speed so your service delivery will be much improved. This also gives you a solid platform for a Disaster Recovery process with the knowledge that you have a trusted copy of your data in a secure location.
- As a managed service the backup process is monitored for you. No longer will you have to change or clean tapes nor have the administrative overhead of shipping them off-site and getting them back. No more will your precious time be consumed checking backup logs, nor will you have the pain of performing backup reruns when the tape backup process has failed. Much of your time will be freed to perform more productive tasks for your business.
- You no longer have to worry about procurement and support of your backup software as you no longer need any software deployed on your servers. You also eliminate the administrative overhead of having to deploy and maintain backup software on every server. Neither will you have the hidden costs associated with tape renewal and replacement. This will let you use your funds for more productive and effective tasks.
- Your servers no longer require backup agents so they will be free to perform their prime role. Not being tape based your backup window should reduce and your applications can run when they need to, not be controlled by the backup regime resulting in your users having improved application availability.
Incremental Forever
The first full backup undertaken in production will make a full copy of your data on the local appliance and a copy of this will be sent to the EACS secure datacentre. Following this first backup the “incremental forever” process will only backup block level changes that have been made to your production data. This minimises the data volumes involved and consequently should reduce the backup window. The data is initially stored on the backup appliance and is then streamed to the secure data centre in encrypted format.
Establishing what to backup
EACS will install and configure a disk based backup appliance on your network to discover what data is on your servers and establish a rate of data change. This appliance is the EACS AddVantage Cloud Backup Data Collector. It performs this analysis and will also perform production backups without the need to install any agents on any of your servers. It will backup most file systems, mail stores and databases while the applications are running. Once the data discovery process has completed we will work with you to establish an appropriate backup schedule and the system can be configured to back up what you require.
Backup Targets can be servers at local or remote sites along with desktops and laptops. With the desktop and laptop backup the local backup collector is held on the device itself and when connection to the internet is established the backup data is then streamed to the EACS AddVantage Cloud Backup Data Aggregator
Backup Schedule
You decide the data retention period and number of copies of your data that you wish to retain in the backup store. The service can store the equivalent of daily, weekly, monthly and annual full backups emulating the traditional tape regime or you could simply hold a daily backup for 7 days purely for DR purposes. The choice is customisable to meet your business needs.
How much does it cost?
The system uses Compression and Deduplication minimising the data space that is required to store your data. We only charge for the true capacity used on the EACS AddVantage Cloud Backup Data Aggregator, not your raw data capacity. The compression and Deduplication achieved will depend on the composition of your data.
The service is charged per GB of space used on the Data Aggregator irrespective of how many servers, desktops or laptops that are being backed up.
What to do next?
To establish if this service will be beneficial for you we can install an EACS AddVantage Cloud Backup Data Collector appliance on your site with Storage Discovery software. This will simulate what a production system would perform and analyse your data to establish what deduplication and compression ratio would be achieved along with identifying the rate of data change.
Stale or redundant data can also be identified to assist in determining what should be backed up to make the process more efficient and minimise the cost to you.
