Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• How is Asempra’s Continuous Availability for Windows applications and data different from other methods of protecting data and providing high availability?
• What are the essential characteristics of Asempra’s Continuous Availability solution?
• How does Asempra virtualize the recovery and data protection process?
• What are the key challenges the BCS solves for mid-market companies?
• How does the BCS eliminate tape backup windows?
• Is the BCS appliance fault tolerant?
• When I order a BCS what comes with the solution?
• What support and services are available with the BCS?
• What are the key features and benefits of the BCS?
• How do I find out more about the Asempra Business Continuity Server?

How is Asempra’s Continuous Availability for Windows applications and data different from other methods of protecting data and providing high availability?

Traditional approaches to data protection only protect the data and high application availability typically protects only the application. The result of these two approaches is that an application must wait for data to be recovered fully before the application can be used. Asempra bridges the gap between an application and its data, ensuring that Exchange and SQL are fully usable in less than 30 seconds after a storage failure. Through the use of Asempra’s patent-pending virtualized recovery and data protection technology (Virtual On-Demand Recovery™), applications do not have to wait hours or days for a complete storage recovery. With the BCS’s continuous and instant availability, Asempra insures the data is there when the application is ready to start. Asempra’s solution gets your users up and running quickly, minimizing the costs of system downtime and data loss.

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What are the essential characteristics of Asempra’s Continuous Availability solution?

1. High Performance Recovery
   A distinguishing feature of the BCS is its ability to provide continuous availability through the real-time capture of continuous changes from multiple servers. The BCS ensures applications have usable data immediately – allowing recovery of Exchange or SQL applications and data as fast as 30 seconds.
2. Using Data Usability and Integrity
   Together with instantaneous recovery, the BCS also insures data integrity at any point-in-time. Applications may become unusable without complete data reliability, consistency, and integrity. Transparent to the user, the application, and your IT staff, the BCS automatically recovers the most recent and uncorrupted version of all files on the first recovery, saving you the cost and time of multiple manual recoveries.
3. Application integration
   Asempra’s real-time event journaling and recovery technologies are tightly application integrated. Through this application integration, customers are provided a solution that rapidly restores data sets, regardless of data set size, in seconds and minutes. By restoring the data sets so quickly, you gain application functionality almost instantaneously.
4. Ease of Use
   The BCS automates data capture and recovery across core applications without extra modules, specialized skill set, or continual management. The BCS turns continuous availability and data protection into a complete, always-on process that requires little IT intervention. The need to schedule backup windows or worry about the loss of data between snapshots vanishes as the BCS is automatically creating a detailed complete data set in real-time. Asempra’s three-step point-and-click recovery process and easy-to-use browser-based interface make it simple for customers to have continuous availability.

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How does Asempra virtualize the recovery and data protection process?

The BCS virtualizes the entire recovery and data protection process. By insulating the application from the recovery process, the application is fully usable without a complete recovery having to take place. This differs from other products where a complete recovery of the data must be made before the application can be accessed and used. For example, after a storage failure and the initiation of a recovery, the BCS allows full use and access to Exchange and SQL as fast as 30 seconds. Should a requested piece of data not yet be recovered from storage attached to the BCS to the storage attached to the designated server, that data is retrieved from the BCS by an on-demand secondary recovery stream and made available instantly to the application, while the recovery continues in the background. Once the recovery is initiated in Asempra’s simple 3-step recovery process, all virtualized recovery and protection processes are transparent to the application, to the user, and to IT.

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What are the key challenges the BCS solves for mid-market companies?

The BCS saves money and IT resources with:

• Near-zero data loss
• Recovery in seconds
• Instantaneous application availability
  • Recover from an Exchange or SQL storage failure in 30 seconds
• Guaranteed usable data on the first recovery
  • From individual emails or files to an entire server farm
• Single solution that solves the critical business needs of continuous availability, data protection, business continuity, disaster recovery, and recovery management
  • Dramatically reduces the cost and complexity for all these needs
• Combines several storage technologies into one solution: Real-time continuous data protection (CDP), application failover, snapshot, disk-based backup, replication, and seamless tape backup integration

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How does the BCS eliminate tape backup windows?

Real-time, continuous protection means no backup window on the primary servers, eliminating hours or even days of data at risk when relying on traditional backup technologies. Seamless integration with leading tape libraries and tape backup packages, including Tivoli, Symantec/Veritas, Legato/EMC and other tape backup software providers means you save time and money. With the BCS providing the source for your backups, you no longer need to procure expensive licenses as you grow your server infrastructure. With the BCS, you eliminate backup windows, simplify backup procedures, and substantially reduce the cost of backup.

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Is the BCS appliance fault tolerant?

Absolutely. The BCS is available not only as a single unit, but also as a 2, 3, or 4 -node cluster. In a clustered BCS configuration, you have both fault tolerance and added performance. A BCS cluster is a fully failover-failback fault tolerant cluster. If one member of the BCS cluster fails, the other transparently takes over, eliminating any single point-of-failure in your continuous availability and data protection process.

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When I order a BCS what comes with the solution?

• Unlimited Continuous Protection Host Agent licenses for all Exchange, SQL, and Windows file servers. No additional fees are required as you add additional server infrastructure.
• A single node BCS appliance. The fully rackable 1U BCS appliance features:
  • 2 quad core Intel processors
  • 8 GB of RAM
  • 2 SATA drives in a RAID 1 configuration
  • Dual 1 Gb ethernet connectivity to your WAN or LAN
  • Fibre Channel or iSCSI host adapter connectivity to your storage array or SAN
• A 500 GB protection license. You only pay for the storage you protect. As you grow your pool of protected data, additional protection licenses are available. And, in many environments no additional hardware is required.

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What support and services are available with the BCS?

Asempra provides a complete support and services offering. Ranging from professional services, maintenance and support, installation, and training, Asempra’s and our reseller partners’ support and services packages are designed to give you the best solution in continuous availability for your Windows applications and data.

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What are the key features and benefits of the BCS?

Please see the Features and Benefits section.

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How do I find out more about the Asempra Business Continuity Server?

To learn more about the BCS, download our data sheets, view our demo, or visit our weekly webinar.

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