White Paper

The Challenges Facing IT With Snapshots

Source: RELDATA, Inc.

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•White Paper: Snapshots

IT organizations are facing increasing pressure from the business units to fully protect vital data and meet shrinking backup windows. In addition, regulatory and compliance needs combined with unrelenting growth of data stores demand that IT maintain accurate and time-sensitive copies of production data for protection, reporting, business intelligence, testing and application development uses. A properly implemented snapshot strategy improves Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). While all the major vendors promote their snapshot technologies, few IT organizations can fully exploit them due to their complexity and inconsistent capabilities. As a result, snapshot technology is underutilized by even sophisticated IT departments.

The reason is simple: snapshots can be file-based or block-based. File-based snapshots require significantly more integration with applications and databases to create a consistent snapshot image. In most cases, IT organizations are required to script the integration with applications or databases necessitating highly specific knowledge and heavy maintenance of the infrastructure to deal with inevitable changes of dynamic IT environments. RELDATA's block-based snapshots, an integral feature of its TrueBlock software platform, offers performance, consistency and simplicity advantages over competing solutions.

There are a number of reasons why businesses don't exploit snapshots:

  • Difficult to manage: snapshots require complex configuration parameters to be set and maintained in evolving IT environments. Many IT organizations lack the expertise to effectively management snapshots. RELDATA's web-based administrative interface makes it easy to create, track, destroy and oversee snapshots.
  • Inconsistent functionality: competitive vendors promote their snapshot capabilities for their FC SAN and NAS hardware, but associated snapshot capabilities are not consistent in terms of core functions, capabilities, even certifications. RELDATA's TrueBlock software ensures users have the tools they need to meet their point-in-time copy requirements. Heterogeneous support: the lack of cross platform support for Unix, Linux, and Windows including applications and databases restricts IT group's ability to use snapshots everywhere they might desire. RELDATA's TrueBlock software ensures that users can deploy snapshot technology in heterogeneous environments, comprised of distributed operating system and applications, when and where business needs dictate.

    • Click Here To Download:
    •White Paper: Snapshots