Posts Tagged ‘DR’

5 Reasons to Back Up Your Data Remotely with CloudArray

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

With a variety of ways to back up your data off-site, ranging from tape transport to online backup software, why back up to cloud storage via CloudArray™? If you consider all options, there a number of good reasons to choose CloudArray for off-site backup and we thought we would share five of them:

5) It works with your existing backup software. You’ve already made the investment in backup software because it meets most of your needs. Why change your backup process, deal with a learning curve and risk losing functionality? Simply point your backup jobs to CloudArray disks, which appear local, and CloudArray takes care of securely moving the data off-site.
4) Network bandwidth is expensive. Even if you have lots of external bandwidth, you don’t want backup to monopolize it. Cloudarray caching minimizes the amount of bandwidth that goes through your external internet connection. The cache can use any type of local storage with cache sizes ranging from a few GB to a full local copy, providing a very fast first line of restore without going to the external network. Compression/deduplication further reduce your bandwidth requirements and some of our upcoming technology that minimizes bandwidth may just knock your socks off.
3) Your data needs security. With CloudArray, data is not only encrypted in-flight via SSL, but it is also encrypted at-rest when it is stored at your provider. That means every bit of data that leaves your premises is encrypted and stays that way until you need it back.
2) Access your data when you need it, where you need it. When we say Compute Anywhere™ access, we mean your data is instantly available on-site, off-site or even in cloud compute, such as Amazon EC2. All you need is an instance of CloudArray software, your configuration credentials and our one-button restore process. Unlike most online backup, your data is not just stored in a one-way vault that requires hours or days to retrieve a single file. Unlike tape, your data is available immediately, not just for disaster recovery, but also for validation, test or development purposes. When was the last time you validated your backups?
1) Cost savings and choice. There are no capital or administrative expenses for the off-site data stored by CloudArray; no dedicated hardware or facilities. CloudArray gives you a choice of cloud storage providers so you always have access to the best pricing on the planet. Want Amazon RRS starting at $0.10 GB/mo? No problem. Want to rotate backups across multiple providers? We can do that, too.

Finally, CloudArray is simple to use. It’s a downloadable virtual appliance you can start using in 30 minutes.

Still need convincing? Try CloudArray free for 30-days. It’s on us, including all the cloud storage you need.

Hosted Solutions Announces Stratus Cloud Storage & CloudArray

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010


Yesterday, Hosted Solutions formally announced its Stratus Cloud Storage offering as well as integration with TwinStrata CloudArray to facilitate access to cloud storage without programming. With SAS-70 Type II data centers in North Carolina and Boston and ability to replicate between the data centers, the combined solution is a great fit for applications/organizations that need to specify location of data to meet performance objectives, availability objectives and regulatory compliance. TwinStrata’s solutions portfolio enables companies to solve a variety of business problems with Hosted Solutions, including:

  • Off-site backup using existing backup software
  • Growing archival data that requires online access
  • Real-time data replication for disaster recovery

Of course, we like nothing more that to hear customers themselves describe the value of our combined solution. As stated by Robb Bryn, vice president of operations at Cape Fear WebMasters, Inc: “We have tested CloudArray and Stratus Cloud Storage with Solution Specialists at Hosted Solutions with impressive results.  This solution gives us the ability to store our backup data in the cloud without increasing our backup window, control our costs, and scale our system.  With this solution, we are able to greatly reduce our local storage requirements.”

Learn more about Hosted Solutions Stratus Cloud Storage here.

A Move to Cloud Storage, Companies Re-Think Data Protection Strategies

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Ongoing discussions with customers on their challenges with existing data protection solutions are leading to changes within their data center. Customers are frustrated with the current data protection process. More specifically, storing information off-site on tape where it can take anywhere from a few hours to as much as a week to restore information. “This is just plain unacceptable and costly”. Human intervention, misappropriation of data, special security transports for tapes that contain certain types of information are all adding to the latency and cost of storing and retrieving data off-site and on tape.

New technologies and solutions with ROI measured in months are driving the need for change. Once such technology is Cloud storage. One of the many uses for Cloud storage is as a target device for data protection applications. Meaning, as opposed to pointing a data protection application to a tape device or even a disk system, point it to the Cloud. Easily accessible from anywhere around the globe, companies [applications] can securely store and access data in real time, cost effectively and with ease. Tape management and off-site tape storage challenges are mitigated or eliminated.

In the Solutions section of TwinStrata.com and on their respective blog we provide a list of data protection solutions and Cloud storage providers that are qualified to operate with CloudArray software. The list of data protection applications are from well established companies such as Oracle (RMAN), Symantec (Backup Exec), Vizioncore (VRanger Pro) and younger companies such as Veeam, PHD Virtual (esXpress). Cloud storage providers include Amazon.com (S3), EMC Atmos, AT&T and others. These applications and providers work together with CloudArray software to protect data and quickly retrieve information at a moments notice.

Check back from time to time, we will be adding more applications to the list of CloudArray supported applications and Cloud storage providers.

Also, Twinstrata is offering a free 30-day trial of CloudArray software. Click here for link.