Most organizations recognize that the introduction of disk into the data protection process is fundamentally changing the landscape of how data is protected. But what organizations are failing to entirely grasp is how disk fundamentally alters how applications can be protected and recovered. Disk can minimize the impact of data protection on production applications while providing shorter recovery times and improving recovery reliability. It is as organizations come to this realization that they also begin to grasp how recovery can displace backup as the next IT headache. (read more)

Bounce the phrase "consolidated recovery" off of most individuals in IT and you are just as likely to get a blank stare as a good answer as to what it means or how to accomplish it. Most IT staff keeps so busy on a day to day basis just managing their assortment of backup, clustering and replication products that they never get much beyond focusing on the protection and recovery of each application. So for them to contemplate the consolidation of protection and recovery using just one methodology has more than likely not even crossed their minds. (read more)

Synchronous replication may be viewed by users as the "Gold' standard when it comes to achieving the highest levels of application availability for business continuity and disaster recovery. But as I previously discussed, using synchronous replication for business continuity and disaster recovery can actually take longer and cost more for organizations to remotely recover applications than if they use asynchronous replication. Now organizations can use asynchronous software like InMage Systems DR-Scout to deliver the same or better results as synchronous replication at a substantially lower cost. (read more)

Synchronous replication is a technology that organizations often view as synonymous with the highest levels of application availability. In fact, a SearchStorage article entitled WAN Mirroring and Replication written a little over a year ago even makes the assertion that organizations using synchronous replication can achieve recovery point objectives (RPOs) that remain near zero with recovery time objectives (RTOs) typically on the order of minutes. But is this assertion about synchronous replication really true and under what circumstances? And is it possible that asynchronous replication can actually deliver better RPOs and RTOs over a WAN for disaster recovery (DR) than synchronous replication? (read more)

Replication software is increasingly entering the conversation as the logical replacement for backup software in client environments. Yet replicating data is really the easy part. Integrating the replication software so it becomes part of the fabric of a company's infrastructure is a far more difficult task. It is also one of the reasons that replication software has, to date, made so little headway in terms of displacing backup software for enterprise wide data protection. But as replication software matures, that will change. (read more)

In a previous blog, Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, discussed how he had sought out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products and found one that met his needs right under his nose. By turning on a feature in InMage Systems' Profiler which he had previously obtained to measure data change rates on his application servers, he converted it into InMage Systems' fully functioning replication software, DR-Scout. But now he still had to assess how well DR-Scout would fit into his existing infrastructure and then build the business case to justify it. (read more)

The road to recovery is a journey that more organizations are embarking upon as they start to look beyond just successfully backing up their data and instead focus on cost-effectively recovering their business. Yet as organizations begin this journey, they find that that the road to recovery is strewn with obstacles and is neither well-traveled nor well-marked. This was the dilemma that recently confronted Dr. James Tu, the Information Security Officer at a real estate services company, who was seeking to carve out an affordable and workable enterprise-wide disaster recovery solution from an uneven landscape of replication products. (read more)

A little over two years ago, an article appeared on the Smart Computing website that provided some tips for how to select the appropriate backup software for your PC. Of the tips it suggested, one of the more interesting was its recommendation to select backup software that stored data in a native format. Storing data in its native format eliminates the need to use backup software to recover it since any computer can access and recover the data. But this article was written for PCs. So the question that companies now need to ask is, "What do they need to consider before selecting a product that will allow them to store replicated data of its enterprise production servers in its native format?" (read more)

One of the more critical pieces of information that organizations need as they put together a disaster recovery plan is how much data they have in their environment and how quickly it is changing. The reason this information is so important is that without it, organizations often have no way to effectively size how much or what type of capacity they need to protect and recover their production data. In fact, I was astonished at how little information this was available about this topic or the fact that there were so few good articles on the subject. (read more)

There is an abundance of negativity in the market place right now but most companies are still planning to keep their doors open in 2009 and beyond which means they still plan to spend money, albeit more frugally than before. Granted, companies are taking a hard look at every line item in the budget and cutting the fat but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, companies are using this as a time to introduce new technologies to solve long standing business problems and one issue that appears high on their priority list for 2009 is recovery software. (read more)