Posts Tagged ‘virtual server backup’
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.
Eliminating Backup Windows – for Physical and Virtual Servers
The e-mail ad touted a “brand new solution” that solves the problem that’s overwhelmed IT teams for years — completing backup jobs in the short amount of time available, the “backup window.” The ad said the company had found a way to incorporate imaging technology to eliminate lengthy backup jobs.
The only problem is, this isn’t new, as ShadowProtect users can attest. Whether you’re backing up physical systems or virtual systems, ShadowProtect takes point-in-time snapshots of the server’s operating system and data. Then, while your server remains online, ShadowProtect creates a backup image of everything in your server environment.
The scheduler in ShadowProtect lets you specify how frequently you run your backup. For example, you can set it up to run a full backup every evening, and take incremental backup images throughout the day — even as frequently as every 15 minutes.
So while the problem of shorter backup windows may be an old one, the solution isn’t necessarily new. And even if you’re planning to migrate to virtual systems — something you can also accomplish with ShadowProtect — you don’t need to change your backup system just because you’re moving into the virtual world. You can do protect both physical and virtual systems with ShadowProtect.