It's not Impossible to get all the Enterprise Backup & Recovery Features that You Need for Free

Any storage architect or administrator that has ever dared to accept the challenge of engineering or re-designing their company's backup and recovery environment has undoubtedly discovered that he or she has had to sacrifice functionality or features based on the practical limits of their budget. Reasons for this vary from vendor to vendor, but mostly it comes down to how many backup and recovery software options are they willing to pay for? Most vendors offer reasonably good licensing for the core software, but once you step outside of that realm, some of the most basics features are not included. Some features I have seen omitted from what I now consider core functionality include:

• Support for disk-based backups and VTL's (cost and quantities are very dependent on the specific vendor implementation)
• Any type of Single Instance Storage, DeDuplication or Compression
• Any Encryption technology, be they Hardware or Software
• Advanced Server and Application level backup agents (Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, Notes, Synthetic full support)
• Bare Metal Recovery
• Granular Recovery of a given applications set of data

This list is obviously not an all-encompassing one but it serves to demonstrate that these are features that are generally not typically included in the core software of the major backup vendors. However, it does demonstrate the need for backup architects to perform a significant amount of pre-planning and research to understand what they are omitting when they give up a feature for price if it's not included in the core software.

In my previous life, I have had experience in decisions like this, and they usually turn out less than positive for the end-user. About 90% of the time it was due to the vendor or the end-user really not understanding what they are losing when they give up a feature.

In that respect, wouldn't it be great if you could tear down those budgetary ramparts and say, "I want to cover my backup infrastructure end-to-end regardless."? Well, don't fret. There is a solution out there which oddly enough doesn't nickel and dime your budgets to death. Asigra TeleVaulting provides an all-encompassing backup and recovery solution, that provides all the layers of backup and recovery functionality needed to ensure that you can simply and easily achieve those backup SLA's without breaking the bank on licenses or manpower resources.

Asigra gives companies the flexibility to maintain this environment on your own, store the data to one of these emerging storage clouds, or even outsource it by using one of Asigra's many MSP's (Managed Service Providers) to assume the responsibility for the backups. Asigra Televualting includes many of the features for which other vendors charge for "free" as part of its core software offering. At the high level Televaulting includes:

• Disk-Based system (No need to worry or deal with physical tape or multiple copies of those tapes, removes all those operational headaches)
• Agentless operations (No need to manage nor maintain those pesky client/server agents)
• Inclusion of space savings features (Deduplication for both DS-System storage as well as replicated backups with all data compressed after it is deduplicated)
• Encryption functionality (AES 256 is included standard with the product)
• Embedded compliance support (FCRP, SOX, HIPPA, PCI-DSS)
• Full System Recoveries offered as part of the package (Standard system recovery procedures apply)
• Granular recovery of databases as well as email stores (down to the message level, with the appropriate software)
• CDP (TIVO for your infrastructure)