Online Backup & Recovery Technology

Faster backup and restore performance is one very good reason to consider moving from tape backup to an online disk based solution. However, many organisations are considering online disk based solutions in order to gain higher reliability and greater backup and restore performance than traditional tapes have been able to offer. A magnetic tape is a fragile medium. Tapes can fail and are vulnerable to environmental factors. Due to these and other factors, data is not always perfectly restored. Experts estimate that 25 to 50% of restore operations from tape partially fail!

Disks are a more durable solution than tape. Disks last longer and they can easily perform multiple and frequent overwriting. Additionally, disks are less sensitive to environmental influences. Online backups to disk are far easier to manage. A large collection of tapes is a logistical nightmare. Restoring from disk is easier and faster due to the continuous availability and coupled with the ever falling cost of disk space the cost of ownership is further reduced.

The technology behind SafeFile fully leverages all the benefits from disk backup. All stored backup data is continuously available online and directly accessible for restore purposes. The SafeFile client software compresses all data and has embedded incremental technology that reduces the data transmission. This means that the backup windows are shorter. A data set that would take hours to backup on tape can be easily backed up online and stored remote by the SafeFile client software in minutes.

Sterling has applied data reduction technology to its backup software. This technology leverages the fact that most of the business data is relatively static: once created, the data undergoes only minor daily changes. Research has shown that on average less than 5% of the total data set changes on a daily basis.

We recognize this and therefore only send the minimal changes of the data set to the Backup Server. Our intelligent software detects the changes in the dataset, compares with the previous backup and only backs up the newly created or modified data, incrementally. This is also done within a file (on block-level), which is extremely convenient for large files (e.g. database files).

SafeFile uses a strong compression technology, which reduces the backup data even more. The compression is, depending on the type of data, on average 50-60% of the original size. This reduces the required storage capacity and allows the data to be backed up over a relatively small internet connection (ADSL).