Author Archive
Virtually There
We hope you saw the news that StorageCraft is now an “Elite” member of the VMware Technology Alliance Program. We’ve been part of TAP for several years now, and our technology has been integrated in VMware’s converter tool for about five years. It’s a natural partnership for us since we’ve been specializing in virtualizing data from the beginning. It’s why we’re virtualization experts.
Virtualization is great for protecting your systems and data for so many reasons. Because it’s not just about the backup — it’s about the recovery. If your data backup is virtualized, it’s very quick and relatively easy to restore all of that information, especially if you’re using best-in-class ShadowProtect backup. This is why StorageCraft places so much emphasis on having a local backup — not just an off-site/cloud backup. Nine times out of ten, the disaster you will need to recover from will be a local disaster: a server crash, human error or power failure, for example. If you have a local ShadowProtect backup, recovery is a snap.
If you haven’t standardized on virtual machines yet and you’re thinking about how to do it, keep ShadowProtect in mind. It will backup all of your physical systems, simplify migration to new, virtual hardware and then backup all of those virtual servers. You’ll want to check out ShadowProtect Virtual and our new pricing for virtual servers in ShadowProtect for Managed Service Providers. When it comes to virtualization, we’ve been there, done that and we may even write the book.
You Asked, We Listened
By now you may have heard that we’ve announced new virtual server pricing for MSPs on our flagship product, ShadowProtect®. We’ve had special pricing for virtual servers for a while, and our MSP partners have been asking for the same thing with ShadowProtect® for Managed Service Providers™. Now the price discount is across the board — both for MSPs and perpetual licenses.
This isn’t just an exercise in patting ourselves on the back for making the change. I might break an arm doing that. But it is to make the point that we do ask for your feedback. And we do listen to it when you give it. We want to hear what you have to say about our products, our partner program and StorageCraft as a company.
This year, we’ll be rolling out new products, introducing new programs and making changes to our current offerings. Like any company, we anticipate that we’ll have to make adjustments along the way. We hope that you’ll be open to telling us if something isn’t working for you — and if it is! We like to hear the good things, too. The StorageCraft team plans to add new ways for you to tell us how our business continuity solutions are helping you and your customers as well as the creative ways you’re using them. We are working on some cool incentives to share that feedback, so please stay tuned.
You talk, and we will listen. We promise.
StorageCraft’s New MSP Rebate Program
StorageCraft is launching its first-ever rebate for its MSP program. Starting Thursday, September 1, StorageCraft MSP partners in Canada and the United States can sign up for rebates on every new StorageCraft ShadowProtect license they add. The rebate will last for six months.
Here’s how it works. First, you must be a StorageCraft MSP. If you are an MSP and you haven’t signed up for the StorageCraft Profit-Ability Partner Program yet, now is the perfect time to join. You can find details on the program and sign up here: www.StorageCraft.com/Profit-Ability.
If you’re already a StorageCraft MSP, you get to go straight to the next step. On September 1st, login into the StorageCraft MSP Licensing console (https://msp.storagecraft.com/msp), and accept the MSP Rebate Program agreement. It’s that easy.
You may want to wait to sign up until you’re sure you have customers lined up, because you have three months to join: the program runs September 1 – November 30. Plus, you’ll want to take advantage of the program as much as possible, since your rebate period will begin the first full month after you sign up and will last for six months after that.
Need to know more? We’re holding two webinars this week to give you more details. Sign up for one – or both – to give you more detail on the program and benefits.
Sign up for Wednesday’s webinar @ 1:00 EDT/ 10:00 PDT.
Sign up for Thursday’s webinar @ 2:00 EDT/ 11:00 PDT.
Plus visit www.MSPWallet.com for more information.
New ShadowProtect Virtual Pack
When we announced ShadowProtect Virtual last week, a lot of you told us you loved the new pricing and licensing options, but something was missing: a server 3-pack license. We kicked the idea around a bit, discussed why we should (or shouldn’t) do it, and then came to a decision. We’re adding a server 3-pack license.
It’s going to take us a couple of days to add SKUs and make sure all of our ducks are in a row, but by week’s end, we hope to have the server 3-pack available on our own Web store and through Lifeboat distribution (in North America). We want you to be able to standardize all of your servers with one backup and disaster recovery solution.
This also gives us a chance to say that we really do value your feedback, and we do listen to what you have to say. We hope you’ll continue to let us know where we can improve our products and our programs. We would like to say “Thank you” to those of you who did take the time to share your opinion and add your two cents. We’ll keep on listening.
MSP University Boot Camps
We’re lacing up our training boots and hitting the road this year for MSP University Boot Camps across the United States. We’re not exactly the drill sergeant in this analogy, but we are offering some great training sessions for managed service providers (MSPs). We’re working with one of our strategic partners, eFolder, to provide MSPs with great information on how they can offer disaster recovery and cloud backup services to their customers.
You can learn more about it in the press release: http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20110202007068/en/StorageCraft-Sponsors-MSP-University-Boot-Camps.
StorageCraft Training Event: Disaster Recovery
This week, we’re offering a brand new training Webinar that focuses on simplifying disaster recovery. This technical training event is called, “Architect simple solutions with ShadowProtect®.”
It may seem daunting, but Disaster Recovery really doesn’t have to be complicated. In this online training seminar, we’ll walk you through a basic DR architecture. We show you how to provide local and remote protection of critical systems and data. We’ll explore fast recovery options that are already available in ShadowProtect. This training will also cover features like HeadStart Restore® and VirtualBoot™.
To sign up, visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/262296513.
StorageCraft ShadowProtect is Product of the Year Finalist
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StorageCraft ShadowProtect is on an elite list today. It’s a finalist for Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com’s Product of the Year Awards for 2010.
The award is pretty prestigious, and it’s truly an honor to be named a finalist in the backup and disaster recovery software and services category. Everyone always says that, but we truly mean it.
The winners will be announced in the February issue of Storage.
StorageCraft Asia-Pacific Teams with VMvault to Help Flood Victims
StorageCraft Asia Pacific is working with hosting services specialist VMvault to give help to businesses hurt by the massive flooding in Queensland, Australia. The two are setting up temporary disaster recovery centers for ShadowProtect customers who are flood victims. News reports indicate thousands of SMBs will have lost their servers and potentially their data, so StorageCraft Asia Pacific is working with local ISPs and hosting companies to donate data center storage. The first to volunteer is VMvault, which is donating server space.
VMvault spokesman Radek Tkaczyk said, “Our servers are high and dry in Wharf Street, Brisbane, availing our clients with uninterrupted access to their virtual servers, as we are equipped with multiple redundancies in all primary systems including power, UPS, network and cooling. We also have an onsite generator our building’s roof, with 48 hours’ worth of fuel. We are pleased to be able to offer server capacity on our primary and secondary clusters to the flood victims to get their businesses back up and running with a VMvault virtual server, free of charge, as our hearts go out to all those affected by the Queensland floods.”
You can read more about it on Wayne Small’s SBSFAQ blog.
Expanded Sales and Technical Training
The new year is off to an excellent start at StorageCraft. We’re hiring new sales and support staff and we’re expanding our training to help you more. We’ll be revamping and revising things over the next few months, but starting this week we’re offering brand-new training sessions.
This Thursday, we’re beginning our weekly series offering in-depth technical product training for StorageCraft solutions. This week’s Webinar is: “Working with StorageCraft Support: The fastest path to resolution.” We will also offer our sales training introduction, “How to Win More Business with a Better Disaster Recovery Solution” on Wednesday. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll have addition technical and sales training sessions.
To learn more about upcoming Webinars or to sign up for a specific training event, please visit the StorageCraft Events Center. And if you have a suggestion for a specific type of training event that you’d like to have, please let us know.
Recorded Training Sessions
If you missed out on our recent technical and sales training sessions, it isn’t too late to catch these Webinars. We’ve recorded them so that you can watch them when you have a little spare time.
To watch our deep-dive technical training, “Unravel the mysteries of ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise,” visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/498164689.
To watch our sales training Webinar, “How to win more business with a better Disaster Recovery solution,” visit: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/633511585.
Both Webinars are free, but you’ll need to enter your e-mail address to view them.
Sales Training: Winning More Business with a Better DR Solution
It may seem like rocket science, but it isn’t hard to protect your customers’ critical data and make a profit for your business. You just need the tools in order to do it. The first is a great disaster recovery (DR) solution. The second tool is a training event to show you how to sell it. Well, done and done.
StorageCraft is offering a FREE sales training Webinar next Wednesday to show you how to win more business with a better DR solution: StorageCraft ShadowProtect. This event will show you why it’s critical for you to have a simple, RELIABLE backup and DR solution to offer your customers and how to sell it to them.
Register for this complimentary Webinar right away, because space is limited.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/618569697
Winning More Business with a Better DR Solution
Wednesday, December 8
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. MST (2:00 EST, 1:00 CST, 11:00 PST)
Free Product Training: ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise
StorageCraft released a brand new product in our ShadowProtect line this year: ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise. It has some features that allow you to replicate your backup image files on-site and off-site. It also lets you pre-stage a server backup as a virtual machine, nearly eliminating restore windows and drastically reducing recovery time objectives. So in practical terms, how does that help you and your customers?
Next week, StorageCraft is offering a free technical product training Webinar to help you better understand the features in ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise and how to use them. This technical deep-dive will look at image replication, HeadStart Restore, plus all of the management capabilities like image consolidation, backup verification and notification features.
Register for this complimentary Webinar right away, because space is limited.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/498164689
Unravel the Mysteries of ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise
Thursday, December 9
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. MST (2:00 EST, 1:00 CST, 11:00 PST)
Success Story: Mann Made Group
If you’re a solution provider with customers in remote locations, you know what it’s like to deal with the special challenges associated with out-of-the-way places. In the middle of the night, in bad weather — sometimes even on a normal day — it’s hard to ensure business continuity for far-flung regions. But we have ways of making that problem a little easier to deal with.
Mann Made Group is a financial services firm that’s headquartered on the Isle of Man. They need to make sure their customers have access to financial information all the time. So they contracted with PC Mann, an IT services provider to help make sure that business is always running smoothly. PC Mann uses StorageCraft ShadowProtect to help power its business continuity offering for customers. This way, PC Mann can give Mann Made Group both on-site backup, for quick recovery in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure, or off-site backup, in case of a disaster like a fire or flood.
With ShadowProtect’s VirtualBoot technology PC Mann can get one of Mann Made Group’s servers backup and and running as a virtual machine in just a few minutes; 30 minutes for a full bare metal restore. From the press release announcing the relationship, here’s what Alan Hollingsworth, Managing Director and Founder of Mann Made Group, had to say:
“We are a services business and any loss of IT systems is damaging to our reputation and our clients. The solution from PC Mann is effectively belt and braces and gives us a business continuity strategy that goes much further than other small firms in our industry.”
For the last 18 months, PC Mann has helped a growing list of clients replace legacy tape with StorageCraft disk based disaster recovery solutions.
“The cost of a full second site or server replication system is still prohibitive for most small business,” explains Andy Heeney, Managing Director of PC Mann, “We choose to partner with StorageCraft as it allows us to remove the complexity of managing server images and virtualised recovery servers and allows us to provide a reliable and cost effective service that requires little on-site management expertise or expensive hardware.” PC Mann is experiencing growing demand for its business continuity services across the island. “Smaller organisations rely on IT to give them a competitive advantage and the loss of applications for just a few hours can lead to customers switching suppliers and long term damage. Solutions like StorageCraft pay for themselves in the equivalent of just a few hours of downtime.”
Powered by StorageCraft
Two of our partners announced they are working together with us on an offering that will make life a whole lot easier for MSPs. LabTech and Doyenz will be using StorageCraft ShadowProtect technology to power a new offering that allows server failover in the cloud. This makes it a whole lot easier for MSPs to monitor their systems with LabTech, backup their systems with ShadowProtect and failover to a virtual machine on-site or off-site in the Doyenz Shadowcloud.
Here’s more about this “Freemium” offering from the press release:
“MSPs need an efficient method of protecting their customers’ information and monitoring their systems to prevent problems before they happen,” said Curt James, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at StorageCraft. “This strategic relationship between LabTech, Doyenz and StorageCraft not only allows MSPs to keep tabs on servers and resolve issues before they become problems, it also allows them to backup and failover systems in the cloud, in case of a catastrophe that can’t be prevented.”
“By partnering with LabTech and StorageCraft, we are proud to offer the channel a truly innovative, end-to-end disaster recovery solution, previously only available to enterprise market,” said Eric Webster, VP of Sales and Marketing for Doyenz. “Managed Service Providers can now ensure complete business continuity and manage their clients remotely with LabTech—and make significant profit margins while doing so.”
“The formed partnerships with Doyenz and StorageCraft, and the newly developed Freemium offer is a huge benefit to our LabTech partners and the entire MSP industry,” said Matt Nachtrab, CEO of LabTech Software. “LabTech Software and its partnerships with other leading industry solution providers like Doyenz and StorageCraft is giving today’s MSPs the needed toolsets to help their IT businesses become more efficient, productive and profitable.”
This gives MSPs a lot of options for backup and disaster recovery. You can read the entire press release here.
In the Cloud
StorageCraft is hanging out at Cloud Expo this week. Not only are we a sponsor, but we’re also heading up a breakout session on backup, disaster recovery and system migration in the cloud. Basically, we’re showing off the many ways you can use ShadowProtect in the cloud. So if you’re at the Cloud Expo this week, be sure to swing by our booth or our presentation.
If you didn’t know that ShadowProtect plays well in the cloud, we can tell you that it’s the backup and disaster recovery solution of choice for a lot of providers — companies we’re happy to partner with. Did you know that Zenith Infotech’s BDR solution is powered by StorageCraft ShadowProtect? So is the BusinessContinuitySuite — part of our relationship with Symform. We’re also working with Doyenz as part of their Shadowcloud solution. We also partner with GCloud3 and many others.
You may have seen one of our presentations where we mention that our technology is on millions of systems around the world. This is why. So many other people trust StorageCraft solutions to help power their own offerings. It’s just another reason why you can rely on ShadowProtect to protect your systems and data.
On the Road Again
In North America, the leaves are changing color, the days are getting shorter, there’s a decided nip in the air, and we’re headed out to another trade show. It must be autumn. The next few weeks we’ll be busy meeting many of you at upcoming tech events across the U.S. and Canada.
This weekend, we’ll are in Las Vegas for one of our favorite trade shows – SMB Nation. Harry Brelsford always brings together a fantastic group of the industry’s best. We’re holding several different break-out meetings, including a technical deep dive of ShadowProtect ImageManage Enterprise, as well as co-branded seminars with two of our cloud computing partners: Symform and Doyenz.
If you’re still getting your feet wet in the cloud, so to speak, you may want to attend both sessions. They may give you some ideas on how to handle your cloud backups. Fortunately, ShadowProtect plays very well in the cloud, so you can use it to save your backups in the cloud no matter which solution you choose.
Next week, we’ll be heading north to Calgary, sponsoring ChannelNext in Alberta, Canada. We’ve been partnering with ChannelNext and TechnoPlanet Productions to tell Canadian solution providers about ShadowProtect. ChannelNext is October 25 in Calgary.
In early November, we’ll be sponsoring Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, California. This will be our first time there. As I mentioned, ShadowProtect really plays well in the cloud, so we think this will be a great opportunity for StorageCraft. Cloud Computing Expo is November 1-4.
In mid-November, we’ll be back in Las Vegas where we’re participating in another Everything Channel XChange event. This year, XChange Tech Innovators is November 10-12.
We hope your fall is a little more relaxed than ours, but we’re definitely not complaining! It’s good to be busy and it’s great to tell people about ShadowProtect.
Data Corruption in Backups
By: Scott Barnes, StorageCraft CTO
Corruption is of course a very scary word. It’s one that we hear very rarely at StorageCraft. When we have heard it, it has generally been related to hardware failure or other software failure. But when we created ShadowProtect, we have had several development rules that have prevented ShadowProtect images from suffering corruptions due to StorageCraft software.
- Backup Image Files can only be written to once. In other words, the image file is created, the backup data is written and then the image file is closed. The backup image file is never opened for write access again.
- Related to rule number one, any tool that must add data to an existing image must do it in an incremental file. For example, when mounting an image file for read-write access, all changes are stored in a separate file, the original image(s) is opened for read only access and a write buffer file is created to store all new writes.
- Only the backup data for a single volume is stored in a single file. For good or bad, our files represent only data for one volume. This is also related to rule 1. Each partition is backed up independently of each other and would require reopening an image file to add a different volume’s data.
When backups images are saved to a local drive, like an internal or USB drive, the file system is very, very good at detecting any type of write failures during a backup. If Windows did not do this, Windows would quickly cease to exist.
The possibility of corruption during a backup to local drive is very low. Have we seen it? Yes, Western Digital MyBooks don’t work well with HP machines. This was tested within and without StorageCraft and it is very repeatable. We don’t recommend the combination.
When saving backups to network shares, you are dependent on a few things, the transport and the file server. In a Windows environment network and server, we have seen very few corruption events. Windows again is very good at detecting failures. We have seen more in the NAS world. Not all NAS devices are equal. There are some very cheap NAS devices. If backups are important to you, I would avoid cheap storage. But if you do opt for the cheaper route, I would test it thoroughly with large files. There was one NAS that would only corrupt images that were between 2-4 GB, but not 5-6 GB, then again from 7-8 GB, but not from 9-10 GB. Test, test, test.
When saving to removable media such as DVD, we highly recommend you use good quality media and again, test, test, test. Cheap DVD media is cheap. Just because you’ve copied many DVD movies doesn’t mean it will work for data. Movies don’t care about corruption; they keep playing right through it. Backups do care.
If an image file is corrupt, it most likely will fail to restore. This depends a bit on where the corruption is in the file, but each part of the file is important and linked to one another so if there is corruption, ShadowProtect will probably fail to restore.
ShadowProtect mounting tools are not so picky. Even if an image is corrupt, in most cases it will mount and you should be able to retrieve some data from it. Even some of the volume recovery tools will work against a mounted volume. Corruption either happens during the backup or long after the backup. If the Backup image file verified once correctly, nothing that ShadowProtect does would corrupt that file after it has been created.
Corruption after the fact is caused by disk issues or software issues. Disk issues include sector rot and general drive failures. Most common software issues would include file system corruption where applications are allowed to write over the top of sectors that are in use, but part of an image file.
Verify run from the system that is to be restored usually picks up any corruption that could occur during the restore. A verify from another machine may not pick up issues related to corruption by the transport during restore. But we rarely see corruption issues. If we have, it has 99.99% of the time been related and traced to the hardware with events to backup the hardware failures.
It is a good idea to verify your image files from time to time. Generally, corruption issues don’t come and go. They are either already there and haven’t been exposed yet or they come and don’t leave.
Always check your event logs. Don’t let any disk related events go unexplained or un-fixed.
For additional information about solving issues with unverified ShadowProtect backup images, please visit the StorageCraft Knowledge Base.
Visit us as MSPWorld Conference & Expo
StorageCraft will be participating in the MSPWorld Conference and Expo next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. If you’re planning to attend, please make sure you stop by and say hello. We’ll be talking about ShadowProtect 4, of course, because that’s what we do.
We’ll also be telling people about the new features that help businesses get back up and running even faster than ever. Can you recover a 1TB server in five minutes or less? We can! And we’ll show you how you can, too. Our booth is #853. Even if you’re already sold on ShadowProtect, we would love to hear from you.
To find out more visit the MSPWorld Conference and Expo Web site http://www.mspnews.com for all of the details.
Video: Business Continuity Suite
In the last few weeks we’ve told you a bit about our partnership with Symform. We’re working together on the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform. Symform worked with Varvid Video to put together this short introduction to the Business Continuity Suite, which includes interviews with Brandon Nordquist, StorageCraft’s vice president of product management and one of its co-founders, Praerit Garg, Symform’s CEO and co-founder and Jamison West, CEO of JWCS, a managed service provider already using the Business Continuity Suite.
If you’d like to know more, visit www.businesscontinuitysuite.com
Disaster Recovery & Data Protection Planning
Over the next couple of months, StorageCraft will be taking part in some Interface 2010 events. Interface 2010 is a technology symposium for information technology managers that connects them with key IT influencers and technology vendors.
We are one of the vendors sponsoring the Interface event in Phoenix today. As part of today’s event, we’ll be holding a seminar on disaster recovery and data protection planning that will show IT managers how to maximize business continuity.
If you want to find out more about hard drive imaging and how the ShadowProtect award-winning line of disaster recovery, data protection and system migration technology can help keep your business going 24/7, you may want to visit us at Interface 2010 or one of the many upcoming technology trade shows we’ll be sponsoring and attending this fall. We’ll keep you posted on all the places where we will be over the next few weeks and months. If you have plans to attend any trade meetings from now through November, chances are we will be there.
For now, here are a few more Interface events coming up where we hope to see you:
Denver October 7
Salt Lake City October 21
Seattle November 17
To apply for registration at an Interface 2010 event, please visit: http://www.f2fevents.com/.
Business Continuity Suite Web Training
Today’s Business Continuity Suite Web training is underway, but there are still a couple of opportunities to sign up. These free, one-hour Webinars will show you how easy it is to offer your SMB customers simple, affordable cloud backup with the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform. Next week, we’ll have two training session, on Tuesday and on Thursday, so you can learn how StorageCraft ShadowProtect and the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud can make it easy for you provide cloud backup to your customers. In addition to easy implementation, the Business Continuity Suite is also very cost effective. Hard to believe? The free Web training will explain why it’s time to move your customers to the cloud.
Here are some benefits of the Business Continuity Suite:
* Rapid recovery
* Restore to bare metal, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments.
* Backup near-line and in the cloud
* Encryption of backup files using 256-bit military grade AES algorithm
* Redundant storage of secure files in multiple locations and around the world.
In addition to saving money, the Business Continuity Suite is also fast and extremely secure. You won’t have to worry about unwanted intruders stealing you or your customers’ data.
The upcoming online training events are Tuesday, September 14 and Thursday, September 16. Check out the Business Continuity Suite Web site to find out more, and to sign up for a Webinar.
Analyst’s view of the Business Continuity Suite
StorageCraft and Symform zoom into online disaster recovery and business continuity
Partnership between software vendors for MSP storage services
By Deni Connor
Senior Analyst
Storage Strategies NOW
September 2010
Data protection and recovery software developer StorageCraft and cloud services provider Symform moved into the world of cloud-based disaster recovery and business continuity with a recent partnership in which Symform will be a platform for protecting StorageCraft ShadowProtect images.
The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform allows Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to offer their customers backup and disaster recovery as a cloud-based storage offering. Using ShadowProtect™ technology, MSPs save backup images onsite and offsite, via the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud™ to enable near-line and cloud-based disaster recovery.
Simply, the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform allows ShadowProtect image-level backups to be securely distributed across other small and mid-sized businesses and among its IT service providers in a cooperative and shared storage fashion in order to protect it and ensure its recoverability.
StorageCraft and Symform are among the first vendors to craft such a deal, which provides their MSP partners and their SMB customers with an affordable and easily implemented means of disaster recovery.
Market background
In the SMB market, although 50% of businesses have a local backup strategy, they often do not have an affordable and efficient means of moving data offsite for protection in the event of a disaster. They may shuttle tapes offsite or they may use an online backup service such as EMC MozyPro or Carbonite, whose pricing is based on a capacity of storage stored. An SMB will soon find that these methods for protecting data and providing business continuity are too error-prone, cumbersome to administer and time-consuming means to recover data quickly. And, they are expensive – online backup services can cost almost $400 a month to protect even just one file server.
Enter the Business Continuity Suite
StorageCraft has partnered with Symform to use its distributed storage system across small and mid-sized businesses and their IT storage service providers. Here’s how the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform works.
StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server™, ShadowProtect Small Business Server™ or ShadowProtect Desktop™ creates an encrypted, image-based backup of a designated system. This series of differential and incremental point-in-time backup image files are then stored in locally hosted folders. The Symform Node software, which is installed on one computer in the customer’s network, is pointed at these local folders, where it monitors them for file adds or changes. It then automatically mirrors the adds and changes made to local storage to the cloud, where it creates a duplicate file structure.
Each StorageCraft image file is reduced to a series of 64MB blocks, which are then encrypted using AES-256 encryption algorithms. These 64MB blocks are then shredded locally into 1MB fragments. Using an erasure encoding algorithm called Reed-Solomon, 32 parity fragments are added to every 64, resulting in 96 fragments. Dubbed RAID-96™ by Symform, any 64 of the 96 segments can recreate the original block, thereby guaranteeing recoverability and high-availability.
All 96 fragments are distributed using a random statistical model to 96 participating Nodes in the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud. An application called Symform Cloud Control™, which runs at Amazon Cloud Services (EC2) acts as a traffic controller, tells the local machine where to place each of the fragments.
When the Symform Node is configured, the end-user or MSP determines how much local disk space it plans to contribute to the cloud. This can be disk space at a local office or that of a MSP. An SMB or its MSP simply needs to contribute as much disk space as the disk space they want to consume with StorageCraft image-level backups.
Channel impact
The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform is a completely channel-focused program, with pricing determined by StorageCraft and Symform MSPs. It makes disaster recovery practical for SMBs and at much less cost – approximately $50 per month per protected server.
The solution lets MSPs provide disaster recovery and business continuity services without a huge outlay for business continuity infrastructure. By simply donating disk space to the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud, the MSP can reap the advantages of acting as a storage services provider (SSP).
SSG-NOW Assessment
StorageCraft’s and Symform’s approach to cloud-based business continuity is a shoo-in for the small and mid-sized business, which is faced with expensive and often unreliable solutions for cloud enablement. The MSP focus of this announcement is close to perfect for the SMB who does business with a particular MSP because of the customer’s inability or disinclination to provide IT resources and because of its relative inexperience with technology. The Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform is priced right for the MSP market – at $50 per protected server, it provides an affordable, easy for the MSP to implement alternative to other inefficient cloud-based backup and recovery solutions on the market.
Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform
Looking for a way to have your cloud and still make money, too? We announced our new joint cloud backup venture today, the Business Continuity Suite powered by StorageCraft and Symform. The news announcement highlights our partnership and how MSPs can use the Business Continuity Suite to backup their customers’ systems and data near-line and off-site — without it costing an arm and a leg.
In the next few weeks, Symform and StorageCraft will offer Web-based training courses so you can learn how the Business Continuity Suite works and how to set it up to get the most benefit for your customers. Basically, you use StorageCraft ShadowProtect technology to backup servers, desktops and laptops and then save the point-in-time backup images to the Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud.
The Business Continuity Suite will help you provide the following:
• Get systems up and running quickly after a catastrophic failure.
• Backup on-site and replicate to the cloud for flexible disaster recovery options.
• Restore to bare metal, to dissimilar hardware or to and from virtual environments.
• Multiple levels of encryption and military grade security of backup files to prevent intrusion.
• Schedule full and incremental backups to be saved automatically on-site and in the cloud.
• Contribute excess storage and get valuable cloud storage in return.
• Rapid recovery of files, folders or your entire system should a disaster occur.
You can learn more about the Business Continuity Suite at www.businesscontinuitysuite.com, where you’ll find white papers, data sheets, an analyst’s report and more. Or sign up for the free, one-hour classes which will show you how you can offer simple, affordable cloud backup to your customers.
Intel and McAfee: A marriage made in cloud heaven?
The channel is buzzing on today’s news that Intel is acquiring McAfee, the security technology firm, for nearly $8 billion. The VAR Guy says this new union should cause a little fear and trembling in Redmond and Mountain View as it is signaling that Intel doesn’t trust Microsoft and Symantec to keep IT secure as everything moves to the cloud. So will this be a marriage made in cloud heaven? Will Intel, by acquiring McAfee, keep business data safe and secure, no matter where it’s housed?
It will be many months before we have answers to these questions, but it’s still fun to ask them. In the mean time, this could create great opportunities for channel partners with an eye on the future who are looking for serious security alternatives. If Intel can successfully merge the companies and the technologies, it will create an opening for solution providers who want to deliver solid security embedded in hardware, and low margins. It may be a leap forward for business continuity moving into the cloud era.
No one is saying Intel’s relationship with Microsoft is over. But they’ll certainly be depending on their own brand for security solutions in the future. Channel partners will want to be asking these same questions as they set disaster recovery planning and future business migration to the cloud.
Setting Up Your Server Backup
We get a lot of requests for best practices and recommendations for ways to set up your server environment. ShadowProtect makes it pretty easy to backup everything on your Windows servers, but there are ways to set things up so that you’re maximizing your resources and your business continuity.
So one of our technical engineers has put together a great guide that outlines some ways to configure your servers and keep them up and running. It involves backing up each Windows server with ShadowProtect Server (or ShadowProtect Small Business Server) and running ShadowProtect ImageManager Enterprise on your critical servers so they’re backed up onsite and offsite. This way, when there’s a business disruption — from a server crash to a category 5 hurricane — you can restore your servers, recover your data, and get your business running again.
These scenarios involve our new VirtualBoot technology, that allows you to boot a ShadowProtect backup image file into a virtual machine in a matter of a few short minutes, as well as HeadStart Restore, which allows you to restore your backups before they’re needed. You can find out more about ShadowProtect by visiting the product pages, or you’re always welcome to contact us with your questions.