Services / Infastructure Technology / Managed Services / VCare Backup and Disaster Recovery

Today’s business environment demands that companies have solid Backup and Disaster Recovery plans and technologies. This demand comes from customers, employees and regulations. Downtime and lost information is simply unacceptable today.

With that said many executives and business owners don’t have a true understanding of the process and technologies. If you can’t answer the following questions you may be one of them:

  • Are we currently backing up our systems?
  • Is the backup media stored offsite?
  • Who is responsible for taking the media offsite?
  • Have we ever tried to restore from our backup?
  • If our systems were damaged how long would it take to get us up and running?

VCare BDR Back Methodology

Base Image

The first backup taken of a server is the base image. The base image is an exact, complete copy of the currently used space on the server. The base image is taken for each volume (or partition) on the server. Once the base image completes, all future backups are incrementals.

Base Image Transfer by External Drive

The base image files are then transferred to an external drive. The drive is then shipped to the co-location facility where the base image files are copied to the Storage Farm (SF). The drive transfer process can significantly reduce the time involved with transferring large initial base images to the co-location facility.

Incremental Forever Methodology

After the base image is created the incrementals take place at the frequency that you select. If you selected 24/7 backups at 15-minute incrementals, that will create 96 incremental files each day. If you selected one-hour incrementals, that will create 24 incremental files each day. All these incrementals will be saved on the NAS but only one image is pushed off-site daily to the co-location facility.

Synthetic Incrementals

Incremental files are collapsed into synthetic incrementals (basically a larger incremental file). This is done to ensure chain integrity and to speed up restorations. The fewer hops from the current point-in-time back to the base image, the faster your restoration will be.

• Intra-day incrementals collapse to a synthetic daily incremental
• Synthetic daily incrementals collapse to a synthetic weekly
• Synthetic weekly incrementals collapse to a synthetic monthly
• The synthetic monthly incremental is currently the highest level back to the base image

VCare BDR Virtualization

With its Instant Virtualization capability, in less than 30 minutes, this unique network atttached storage (NAS) device can be configured to function as a standby server. In addition to replacing management-intensive, error-prone tape backups. This new NAS-based technology performs data backup at the block level where the actual 1s and 0s are captured from the hard drive, essentially eliminating failures related to open files. Because block-level data is raw information that’s independent of file structure formatting, it’s the most efficient way to write to a disk. Database applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server transfer data in blocks without having to worry if files are open and in use. Backups are performed as frequently as every 15 minutes, providing clients with numerous restoration points compared to traditional tape backups. You have the option to send your data from the local NAS device to high- availabilty, redundant off-site co-location facilities.

The NAS device has the ability to create a standby of a failed server by creating a virtual image of the failed server on the NAS. This unique ability is due to the fact that the virtualization engine natively understands the backup images as a hard drive allowing a failed server to be virtualized within minutes. The “virtualized” server retains the same IP address, NetBIOS name, MAC address and application state of the original server. Once virtualized, the standby server will resume the backup schedule that was in effect before the failure.

Bare-Metal Restore (Virtual to Physical)

When it comes time to restore the virtualized server back to physical hardware, our bare-metal restore process allows restorations to dissimilar hardware.
We provide you with a boot disk that can be used with the new server to trigger the restore process. This allows you to restore the server image onto the new server while adding the new drivers necessary for that server. In essence, you can manipulate the hardware abstraction layer (HAL). This is very important because in most cases, you
never replace the original server with the
same hardware.


VCare BDR Monitoring and Security

VCare BDR solution is monitored and managed 24/7 by our NOC Team. If a problem occurs during any backup or with the hardware, we are alerted and take corrective action.

Encryption is an important step in the process of transmitting data between the NAS and the remote sites because it greatly reduces the risk of data loss incidents that plague magnetic tape backup solutions and prevents “man-in-the-middle” attacks during transmission. We employ the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm to encrypt the backup images before they are saved on the NAS. If offsite transfer is selected, after the servers are backed up to the NAS an independent 256-bit encrypted tunnel is created and transmits the imaged data to a secure off-site location where it resides in an encrypted, compressed format. That remote site then replicates again to an alternate data center, creating a total of three copies of the data in three geographically distinct regions. Only those with the pass key have access to the data on the NAS or the remote storage facilities. You can rest assured that your data is fully secured.

Recovery after a Catastrophe

If a disaster results in your end-client losing the entire office — servers and on-site NAS included — we follow a standard Disaster Recovery protocol to order a newly imaged NAS with the most current backup to be shipped out via next- business-day air transportation to a location of your choice. Depending on the NAS model, multiple servers can be virtualized on one NAS even as the NAS continues to perform backups.

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Call 412.220.8460 or email sales@verticalsol.com today for more information about our
VCare Solutions