IPDataVault Cloud Storage
Compute and Backup with a Silver Lining
IP DataVault, hosted capacity on demand storage, virtualized compute resources and cloud-based backup offering from IP DataSystems.With IP DataVault, the burdens of maintaining and managing traditional on-premises storage, servers, backup and disaster recovery shift to the highly trained and experienced engineers at IP DataSystems — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. IP DataVault ensures that critical data is secure and can be quickly restored if needed, while eliminating the costs of hardware, media, maintenance and human capital.
SCALABLE STORAGE & CPUs
There is no doubt that the increasingly complex nature of today’s IT systems requires resources and expenditures that can distract from an organization’s core business focus. That is particularly true when it comes to the relentless growth of stored data and server proliferation. Industry studies show that once all the costs are included, inhouse storage is at least five times more expensive to own and run per gigabyte than hosted, cloud-based storage.
IP DataVault provides a far more flexible, scalable and cost-effective alternative. On-demand storage eliminates the common and costly practice of over-provisioning storage to meet a theoretical peak demand. You only pay for the usable capacity you need.
With a “pay-as-you-go” model, customers can scale their storage usage up or down as needed, without having to continually grow farms of storage networks and servers. By shifting the capital expense and maintenance of IT assets to IP DataSystems, customers take advantage of economies of scale by gaining access to our hardware, applications, bandwidth and skill sets.
The cloud-based solution leverages customers’ existing network resources to distribute storage across multiple nodes at IP DataSystems’ co-location facilities. Customers maintain control of their data through IP DataSystems’ broad array of collection, management and archive technology.
EFFICIENT BACKUP & ARCHIVING
Backup and recovery operations have become increasingly complex and problematic. In a recent survey of over 400 IT professionals, more than 40 percent reported that their backup times exceed 24 hours. In essence, they are producing data faster than they can back it up.
Even worse, studies show that up to 50 percent of all backups are not fully recoverable. That means organizations are spending extraordinary amounts of capital and manpower on processes that are decidedly unreliable.
IP DataVault’s managed backup service allows customers to simply and safely store all critical data while cutting the costs and administration overhead involved with the management of traditional backup systems. This frees up critical IT resources that can be diverted to projects focused on growth and core competencies.
IP DataVault’s managed backup solution includes an onsite backup appliance that is installed at no cost to the customer. The appliance performs backups locally then replicates the data over the customer’s existing network to IP DataSystems’ co-location facility. The appliance maintains up to 30 days of backup onsite. This local copy provides rapid restoration of individual files or systems, while another copy is maintained offsite in case of a data center disaster.
IP DataSystems consults with each customer to determine the best backup strategy to meet the customer’s business requirements. Backup jobs can be run nightly or at more frequent intervals — the backup platform supports continuous data protection. Retention rules simplify data retention policies by focusing on what needs to be recoverable.
IP DataSystems’ offsite data vault is maintained in a Tier IV co-location facility that is SAS-70 Type II certified. The backup platform is FIPS 140-2 certified and all data is private-key encrypted with AES256 ciphers. The onsite appliance provides bit-level source based or inline deduplication, disk-to-disk backup so there is no tapes to manage.
Data is de-duplicated and compressed locally, and only changes are replicated offsite. The architecture streamlines the backup environment and provides support for virtualization. As a result, IP DataSystems is able to resolve many of the challenges associated with traditional data backup while maximizing security and cost-efficiency.
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS
When he once was questioned about an opponent’s strategy for an upcoming fight, former heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson famously remarked: “Everybody has a plan — until they get hit.” The sentiment is also unfortunately true for many organizations and their disaster recovery (DR) planning. There is nothing like an actual crisis to expose the weaknesses of a plan.
Traditional DR solutions are slow and prone to failure because they involve many manual and complex steps, are difficult to test and require expensive duplication of the production data center infrastructure to ensure reliable recovery. As a result, organizations find themselves unable to provide sufficient disaster protection for more than a small subset of their production systems.
IP DataVault delivers a far more reliable solution. By providing the storage system, file or block system and all applications necessary for backup, archiving, eDiscovery and disaster recovery, customers can access their data from anywhere with a secure internet connection.
In a recent study of organizations with formal disaster recovery programs, the Aberdeen tech research firm discovered that organizations that had moved at least part of their data storage to the cloud recovered from downtime events almost four times faster than those with no formal cloud storage program. In addition, users of cloud storage met their Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) more often than those storing their data in-house, and saw larger year-over-year improvements in the time needed to recover from disaster or downtime.
CONCLUSION
While IP DataVault can serve as a valuable extension of existing in-house storage solutions, that only scratches the surface of the possibilities. By leveraging the cloud, IP DataVault can serve not only as the primary data storage for day-to-day operations, but also as a reliable and cost-effective backup and recovery platform and the key component in a sophisticated disaster recovery plan. By delivering such benefits simply and efficiently, IP DataVault can help customers reduce the money and manpower they devote to traditional storage infrastructures and divert those resources to more business-focused endeavors.
