Arsenal Touts Rapid Restoral

Arsenal Digital is boasting a pair of data protection services that allow guaranteed recovery of failed data within 72 hours.

What's that, you say? It's not immediately retrievable? Before you hiss and moan, listen up: A short illustration may clarify.

Imagine, if you will, that you're a small business owner with a sizeable online operation. You don't have an on-staff IT specialist to perform backups, but you need reliable help. You fear human error, or your office is in a flood plain. So you enlist one of the growing roster of online backup firms.

Disaster strikes. You lose your server. You phone your backup provider. The fastest you can get your data back is overnight, you learn, via a DVD shipment with Fedex. You opt for that. Next day, the data arrives, thanks to the ability to Fedex to navigate flood waters. You attempt to install it, but find it's not that easy to do on a different computer, owing to format and interface constraints you didn't anticipate. You make more calls. A third-party technician who supports your service provider may be able to help, but he's tied up until next week.

Meanwhile, the amount of data you require can't be ported over the Internet, since there's simply too much of it. What's more, your remote connections may be out of commission.Arsenal Digital claims to change this scenario. Instead of relying on the mail and a DVD, Arsenal will bring a fully capable server to you within 72 hours of a failure, thanks to a customized version of a backup appliance from Avamar. This appliance is brought onto your site when you sign up for Arsenal service. This too saves time, because the LAN-linked box doesn't consume WAN bandwidth. Once the copy is made, it's easy to update remotely. Then, when you need your applications again, the appliance is ready to go -- in the company of an Arsenal technician. No couriers, no WAN transmission.

Arsenal calls the onsite backup appliance ViaRemote: The RapidProtect option is the initial backup; the RapidRecover option is the 72-hour full restoral. Both are priced according to backup events, Arsenal says. RapidProtect costs $1,500 per Tbyte of data backed up; and RapidRecover costs $2,500 per Tbyte.

Arsenal also offers a bare-metal restoration as an add-on service, and cost depends on the number of servers backed up.

Arsenal isn't the only vendor to look for shortcuts to disaster recovery restoral. AmeriVault offers a similar "Mobile Vault" service, involving a disk-based appliance. According to AmeriVault's Web site, "Mobile Vault is a disk device used to ship larger volumes of data to your site. It is used primarily when an online restore isn't feasible due to volumes and available bandwidth. AmeriVault maintains a fleet of Mobile Vaults at our data centers, ready for upload and shipment to your recovery site."

An AmeriVault spokeswoman says it's unusual for data to be returned to customers any later than two days. Still, there are time factors to consider. "For large recoveries, where we have to write data to a mobile vault, there is the write time (data dependent) and the shipping time. So, the amount of data and location from our vault are factors. We do offer local backup if that is an issue."Another provider, EVault, uses a similar portable disk device to save time on initial backups and restore data quickly to remote users. "For customers that choose to deploy a local vault [appliance], recovery for a full DR is immediate," states Richard Heitmann, VP of product marketing at EVault. "For customers that backup over the wire to one of our tier 3-4 data centers, we ship a QuickShip mobile vault to arrive at the customer site same-day by courier if available, or delivered priority the next business day."

Iron Mountain's LiveVault, though contacted, declined to answer questions about data delivery.

These new offerings raise questions about the nature of online backup services. How long does it really take to get something back? Is it worth it to rely on outside help?

At least one expert thinks it's worth it. "The question is whether or not a service can do a better job of backup than you can. Most of the time, they can. Ninety percent of the time, restore failures are not technology-driven, they are personnel-driven," says W. Curtis Preston, VP of data protection at GlassHouse Technologies. He says many firms assign backup to entry-level technicians, who once they get promoted, are quick to leave the post. "Backup is perpetually managed by junior people," he says.

Preston suggests that companies of any size simply state their RTO (recovery time objective) to a service provider upfront. Chances are, it can be met by most reputable companies, through a range of equipment and backup site options, for a fee. Once the deal is signed, it's up to the customer to verify -- and keep verifying -- that the provider can meet the objective.If one provider can't cut it, there are plenty of new ones cropping up. "Gartner has no official forecast, but anecdotally I'd say the market is pretty much growing by leaps and bounds... with 40 to 50 percent growth," says Gartner analyst Adam Couture. Companies like BitLeap, Digitiliti, and MozyPro are joining larger players like HP and IBM in offering services. With a broadening range of choices, it's likely companies of all sizes will have lots of service options to consider.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch