FalconStor's New RecoverTrac Technology Puts the Frosting on the Disaster Recovery Cake
Ask any organization if they want a disaster recovery (DR) solution and the answer is almost always a "Yes." But then rephrase the question and ask, "Are they willing to invest a lot of time and money to test, implement and continually verify that a DR solution works as intended?" Put that way, it is not unusual for that organization to hem and haw before finally responding with a "No."
It is for that reason that most vendors only ask organizations if they want to purchase a DR solution. It is not until after organizations buy a so-called DR solution do they find that all they have obtained is the components to do DR. They still lack the expertise that they need in order to implement it and the framework needed to manage it.
In explaining this situation to one individual, I compared today's DR solutions to a cake without the frosting. DR solutions today are certainly more than the ingredients that one needs to make a cake such as the butter, eggs, flour, milk and sugar. But from the perspective of the organization buying the DR solution, what they end up with is an unfrosted cake that comes delivered with a set of instructions.
This set of instructions tells them how to frost and decorate the cake. But if they do not want to frost and decorate it, their only option is to call a cake decorator (i.e. professional services) to frost it for them.
That's great for the few organizations that actually have the time and/or money to configure a DR solution. But many do not. It is for these reasons that so few organizations actually have implemented a working DR solution despite already having some of the frame work in place to make it work.
This situation was in part the impetus behind FalconStor's introduction of the RecoverTrac technology that it has now added to its Continuous Data Protector (CDP) software. RecoverTrac in essence makes the components (replication and snapshots) of DR solutions useable by rolling the implementation, testing and the ongoing management of its snapshot and replication into an appliance that can be installed into today's enterprise environments.
At a high level, RecoverTrac:
It is this problem that the new RecoverTrac technology in FalconStor CDP addresses. FalconStor recognized that snapshots and replication are only foundational building blocks in creating a service-oriented architecture, not the end result. By layering RecoverTrac into its CDP software, Falconstor does more than make snapshots and replication practical to use as part of a DR solution. FalconStor makes DR a manageable, viable and workable strategy for any organization.
It is for that reason that most vendors only ask organizations if they want to purchase a DR solution. It is not until after organizations buy a so-called DR solution do they find that all they have obtained is the components to do DR. They still lack the expertise that they need in order to implement it and the framework needed to manage it.
In explaining this situation to one individual, I compared today's DR solutions to a cake without the frosting. DR solutions today are certainly more than the ingredients that one needs to make a cake such as the butter, eggs, flour, milk and sugar. But from the perspective of the organization buying the DR solution, what they end up with is an unfrosted cake that comes delivered with a set of instructions.
This set of instructions tells them how to frost and decorate the cake. But if they do not want to frost and decorate it, their only option is to call a cake decorator (i.e. professional services) to frost it for them.
That's great for the few organizations that actually have the time and/or money to configure a DR solution. But many do not. It is for these reasons that so few organizations actually have implemented a working DR solution despite already having some of the frame work in place to make it work.
This situation was in part the impetus behind FalconStor's introduction of the RecoverTrac technology that it has now added to its Continuous Data Protector (CDP) software. RecoverTrac in essence makes the components (replication and snapshots) of DR solutions useable by rolling the implementation, testing and the ongoing management of its snapshot and replication into an appliance that can be installed into today's enterprise environments.
At a high level, RecoverTrac:
- Leverages existing FalconStor CDP software to create application consistent snapshots and then replicate the data to the DR site. FalconStor CDP does the application consistent snapshots, creates up to 255 snapshots per protected volume and then replicates the data to another site.
- Automates the implementation and ongoing management of DR. Configuring the snapshots and replication of data between two sites normally takes a knowledgeable individual with a high level of expertise to complete these tasks. RecoverTrac eliminates the need for this. Now an administrator can go into the RecoverTrac's GUI and configure FalconStor CDP to take snapshots of applications at the production site and then replicate that data to the DR site. Further, the administrator can set policies so CDP snapshots and replication continue to occur automatically.
- Automates the recovery at the DR site. Automating the recovery of production applications (physical or virtual) and the resources that they need to recover (networking and storage) at the DR site is what defines a true DR solution. This is the true value of RecoverTrac.
In addition to supporting physical-to-physical (P2P,) physical-to-virtual (P2V,) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) machine recoveries, RecoverTrac also manages and automates the other functions that are needed to automate DR. This includes giving organizations the ability to reassign network IPs, provision and boot physical and virtual machines at the DR site and even set policies so they boot in the right order and understand application dependencies on other servers.
By way of example, it is common in enterprises for there to be dependencies between different application servers. In this scenario, when an application server comes up, it by default looks for another application server as part of its boot process as it gets or receives data from that other application server. If that other application server upon which it has a dependency is not already operational, then the application on this server can fail to start. RecoverTrac helps to prevent these situations by verifying the first application server is operational before initiating the recovery of any servers that have a dependency on that first application server.Successfully implementing a DR solution has never been an easy task. But what has added to the difficulty of successfully implementing it is that vendors have glossed over the complexity of DR and presented replication as DR. However anyone who has ever tried to treat snapshots and replication as DR knows that it is like buying a cake without the frosting - it is incomplete and almost unusable.
It is this problem that the new RecoverTrac technology in FalconStor CDP addresses. FalconStor recognized that snapshots and replication are only foundational building blocks in creating a service-oriented architecture, not the end result. By layering RecoverTrac into its CDP software, Falconstor does more than make snapshots and replication practical to use as part of a DR solution. FalconStor makes DR a manageable, viable and workable strategy for any organization.
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