In the ever-changing world of IT there are two things that we definitely know; 1) data is growing exponentially, and 2) data is everywhere.
To elaborate on both of those points, the growth of data is a challenge that has been constant for most business over the last decade, coupled now with the added difficulty of BIG DATA and you have a tricky storm to navigate. Secondly, data now encircles and underpins almost every aspect of our lives (even if we try to avoid it), whether it be a laptop or desktop, a business server, or devices like smart phones and even the newest variety of device, wearable tech.
Regardless of where this data comes from and what it does, somebody out there values it. This could be sentimental value (e.g. family photos for example) or monetary value (customer data, for example), whichever it is that data needs protection. Accidents, device failures and even natural disasters are all enemies of our precious data.
This year’s Asigra Global Partner Summit attracted the usual bunch of recognised industry speakers, such as Gartner’s Tiffani Bova and social network expert Jill Rowley, as well as breakout sessions from the likes of Robert Rose and Asigra engineers themselves. Topics of discussion were of course Asigra’s roadmap for the year ahead, how to reach an ever-changing market, and how all businesses should focus their efforts on the customer.
So what’s new?
Backup
Asigra is leading the market trend by developing methods to backup data in the cloud. Office 365, Google Apps and AWS Snapshots (to name just a few) can all now be secured by Asigra. Despite these enablers all having various levels of protection built into their products, the phrase “putting all your eggs in one basket” becomes very relevant when considering how this data is protected against our data’s natural enemies (accidents, device failure and natural disaster). It stands to reason that a safety net is not the worst idea in the world. Compliance with data regulations also means that many businesses will have to find a second home for their data away from these cloud providers.
Recovery
One of the most encouraging developments this year was the announcement that Asigra would soon support File-Level Restore (FLR) of Hyper-V backups. Asigra already supports the same feature for VMware backups, and so this is a most welcome announcement which further strengthens Asigra’s offering.
Disaster Recovery
DS-Client to DS-Client replication enables companies a different approach to backing up virtual machines by first replicating the VM offsite. Secondly, the data on those VMs (individual files, databases and applications) can also be protected against corruption and deletion. The main benefit of this feature is reduced downtime. This is replication, which is different to a conventional backup, as there is no restore process. Instead, the VM is moved by Asigra to another location, and spun up from there. The benefit is greatly reduced recovery times, as customers don’t have to wait for a restore to happen.
The other benefit of this is it gives any business a boost towards (or helps them maintain) regulatory compliance.
Archiving of Backed Up Data
For businesses, holding on to data isn’t a matter of policy; it’s a matter of compliance. Unfortunately for business the older their data gets the less valuable it is and so it makes sense to move it on to less costly storage media. Asigra have recognised this and have added the use of tape or Object Based Storage to their road map.
After reading ‘tape’ you’d be forgiven for thinking this was just an archive product rebranded. Whilst achieving the same end goal (putting old data that is rarely needed on to cheaper storage media) they do it in different ways. Archiving has to convert any file type into an archivable format. Asigra’s new method will avoid that, and will archive the data in its raw format making it very easy to recover when the time comes.
The addition of compatibility with Object Based Storage is an interesting development for the future. Whilst in the early days, this will be one for the future, so watch this space.
The Summary
Overall the message from Asigra was clear, they are in touch with the current needs of customers (and providers), but are very aware of where the industry is going and what needs to be done to back it up along the way!
