Disaster Recovery

Evaluation Particulars

• What Do We Consider Appropriate for This Review?
We will consider proposals that support disk-to-disk data replication over an 80-mile distance for the purpose of protecting data from a complex, heterogeneous, production storage environment.

• CriteriaWe will be judging products based on the following criteria:

This analysis will result in a head-to-head comparison of competing solutions. One response is selected as our Editor's Choice.

• Product Requirements
Solutions should, at a minimum,

• Provide the means for replicating mission-critical data reliably and securely across a WAN so that the remote data copy is synchronized to within five minutes of the original and is available for use by applications within 30 minutes of an interruption of normal processing operations.

Ideally, solutions should include mechanisms or functionality for:

• Hosting replicated data on storage platforms or topologies that do not replicate on a one-for-one basis storage platforms located in the production environment, thereby enabling greater flexibility and lower cost for the overall recovery strategy

• Monitoring the ongoing performance of the replication strategy

• Testing the replication strategy without disrupting normal application or storage operations

• Securing data from eavesdropping or unauthorized access during the replication process and after "failover" of application access to the replicated data set

• Scaling readily in response to increases or decreases in the volume of data to be replicated

• Culling from replicated data duplicate and/or non-critical data as well as data or files containing virus signatures or other malicious software code

• Automated techniques for optimizing data transfers across WAN interconnects of varying bandwidth and for optimizing WAN interconnects for best possible cost-efficiency

We've provided participating vendors with the following RFI. We've created a scenario where a fictitious supermarket company is looking to improve their data management and protection, as well as improve their situation during any data loss disasters.

You can view our RFI (in PDF format) here.