NEW YORK – CA has introduced a recovery management solution that offers continuous data protection , business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities in one package.
The Islandia, N.Y.-based vendor says its BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA bundle integrates the WANSync high availability and Assured Recovery disaster recovery testing solutions from XOsoft Inc., acquired by CA in July, with BrightStor ARCserve Backup. CA said the solution enables a range of recovery management best practices including rapid backup to different forms of storage media, replication of data to remote servers, and recoverability testing for key business applications and data.
Frank Jablonski, CA’s director of product marketing for recovery management, said one of the biggest problems customers face is meeting their backup windows. “It depends on what their recovery point and time requirements are,” he said.
The optimum recovery point depends on how valuable the data is on their system, and how much data — whether one hour’s worth or 24 hour’s worth — they can afford to lose, Jablonski said. Recovery time requirements are based on how quickly businesses need to access their information. Depending on its size, a business hit by a disaster could face various challenges. For example, “their cash flow could be a big issue for them,” said Jablonski. “If they can’t afford to pay their bills, their business could spiral downward rapidly.”
With the changes in business requirements and rapid growth of data volume, businesses are well aware of the various solutions that help them meet their recovery point and time requirements. Solutions may include traditional tape backup systems or disk-based backups, hardware-based snapshots or CDP, among other things.
While all of these solutions help businesses meet their objectives, the problem is that they are all independent. “You’ve got the poor backup administrator trying to figure out which solution to use,” depending on how much data the business can afford to lose for each application., Jablonski said.
The integrated XOsoft technology, along with CA’s ARCserve backup product, offer customers a “full continuum of data protection…all in one package,” Jablonski said. Customers can choose what protection they need on a per-application basis.
Jablonski noted that there are some recovery management systems out there that are able to back up entire environments, “but it gets very expensive when you have to do continuous availability for all systems. You don’t want to pay for what you don’t need.” With the BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA bundle, businesses can spend more on what they need to protect on a higher level, and dish out less money for data that does not require as much backup. “They can set whatever objectives they require for recovery,” he said.
The BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA Bundle is available now on a global basis through CA partners. In October, CA introduced XOsoft technology to its channel and is offering both sales and technical training to get its partners up to speed, said Jablonski. The BrightStor ARCserve Backup/WANSyncHA Bundle is something partners will be able to offer to customers who previously bought backup systems, said Jablonski.
The recovery management solution should also be a good fit for customers who have purchased virtualized server software from VMWare, and can be added on to Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server sales. “These are other opportunities to increase the total value of the sale,” he said. Pricing for the bundle starts at US$4,500 for the base-level configuration.
This column was written by Patricia Pickett of ConnectIT
