Asigra is the only Agentless, Multi-site Backup and Recovery software solution available on the market today. Using WAN optimisation techniques, this architecture shatters the limitations of traditional distributed backup solutions such as tape. Asigra’s unique Agentless Architecture does not require Agents or Clients to be installed on target machines, providing a single point of backup administration for an entire network.
For more than 25 years Asigra has stayed ahead of the market with an efficient, cost-effective and transformational Backup and Recovery solution which aligns the value of data with its storage costs. BTL has had an established Strategic Partnership with Asigra since 2005 and ever since has provided award winning Asigra solutions to its customers. BTL are the only UK based Asigra Hybrid partner who can provide both managed service and managed Asigra vaults, dependent on the size and requirement of its customers.
Here are some of the key features which continue to ensure Asigra stays at the Forefront of the Online Backup market.
Agentless Architecture: The software is only required to run on a single device providing a single point of administration across an entire network. This reduces the overhead on the production network to a minimum, as well as being completely non-pervasive for critical servers and applications.
De-duplication and Compression: De-duplication and compression takes place before the data leaves the production server significantly reducing network traffic.
Incremental Forever Backups: Only Incremental Block Changes are backed up on a day to day basis, significantly reducing backup windows.
WAN Optimisation: The above features mean your existing internet connection can be utilized to run the backups, without the requirement for a dedicated internet connection.
Encryption: All data is encrypted and decrypted by the client software ensuring encryption both in flight, and at rest. Encryption is enforced using three optional standards, DES, AES128-bit and AES256-bit.
Bare Metal Restore: Full servers and desktops can be re-created in minutes. The server returns exactly as it was before the hard disk failure with the same IP address, Active Directory and Registry.
Full Mail Backups/ Message Level Restore: BTL can protect all e-mail data types including Full Exchange, Novell, GroupWise and Lotus Notes.
Hot database & Open File Backup: Backups of SQL, Oracle, Postgres and DB2 & Access databases can be done “Hot” whilst running.
FIPS 140-2 Security Certified: FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) are a set of U.S. government security standards developed by government and industry working groups. Asigra is the ONLY Online Backup solution on the market to receive this security standard.
The Asigra solution requires no agents, which inherently makes it easier to install and support than legacy backup and recovery solutions.
Backup and recovery software typically requires agents that are installed onto the host servers that a system administrator wants to back up. Even in a modest-sized environment, agent management can get extremely complex when an administrator is forced to deal with different operating systems and revision levels. The complexity of agent management is further complicated by the growing number of software packages that also require agents running on the same host servers, or what is also referred to as “agent pollution”.
Asigra does not require any agents to be installed but instead reaches out over the network to back up operating systems, file systems, and applications, using industry standard programming interfaces. To understand how Asigra backs up data over the network without the use of agents, consider how a local hard drive in a Microsoft Windows server can be backed up over the network.
A system administrator accesses the local hard drive over the network as a shared drive and maps it as a drive letter. A disk-to-disk backup of that hard drive can then be performed by copying the contents of one hard drive to another hard drive over the network. Asigra software works without agents but instead uses a sophisticated extension of this idea. This is simple and elegant in concept, but required a lot of hard work and years of development to get right on a broad variety of operating systems and data types.
Why This Matters
Dealing with backup software agents is a cumbersome and mundane task that can be extremely time consuming. Matching agent revisions with operating system levels, researching compatibility issues, and other labour-intensive tasks are non- existent when using the Asigra solution.
Additionally, many problems that occur while managing backup software are due to agent bugs and their incompatibility with host servers. Asigra is inherently easier to support and the risk of problems is reduced as compared to other solutions because of its agentless design. Finally, traditional backup and recovery software puts agents onto servers and processing power is being stolen away from a server’s core application to feed the needs of agents. Asigra makes no such demands of the servers it is backing up.
The Problem With Agents
The presence of agents in the backup/recovery software (be it either a tape or a disk-to-disk (D2D) product), directly impacts data security, recoverability, and costs. IT managers already know the downsides that accompany agent- based solutions:
Compromised security – A port in the firewall must be opened for every agent. And, because almost every agent has administrative privileges, it effectively creates a back- door hole in the server architecture—tap into the agent and have your way with the server. With no “inflight” encryption mechanisms, agents also put data at risk during transmission from the remote office to the data center.
More pieces of software to manage and to fail - More sites, more data, more applications, more users, more systems, more agents—growth makes everything harder to manage, and agents only compound the problem. As the infrastructure expands in size and complexity, problem diagnosis takes longer. Operating system upgrades, now implemented monthly by many organizations, have broader impact and potential to break software, including proliferating backup agents.
Agent management drains IT resources, causes disruptive downtime, and negatively impacts data recoverability.
Exorbitant licensing fees – Traditional software vendors charge for software based on the old per system model, a pricey plan that requires customers to keep close tabs on complex system and user landscapes. For many growing organizations, buying a site license is actually a simpler— albeit even more costly and often unnecessary—solution than trying to keep track of large numbers of backup products installed across hundreds or thousands of sites. There are even companies that now consult on doing audits to help enterprises try and lower license fees.
Mounting administrative costs - Heterogeneous application environments can be administrative nightmares when backup processes require the installation and management of agents for every single flavour of database, application and operating system platform. It takes time and a lot of ‘touching’ of remote-site systems to push agents and agent upgrades out to every server in the backup roster. And each time a data center administrator or service provider has to deploy an agent or intervene to support it at a remote site, that cost rolls back into their business model, making it increasingly difficult to be competitive or stay within budget constraints.
To put licensing and administrative costs in perspective, an enterprise with just five offices can easily spend $50,000 to purchase and maintain the file / print server, email server, database, and workstation agents required for backup processes. For large enterprises with thousands of agents, licensing and support costs can quickly add up to millions of dollars.
How does it work?
As the industry’s only agent-less, multi-site backup and recovery software solution, Asigra technology completely eliminates the negative impact of agents. How does it work?
The Asigra architecture consists of two software components: the DS-Client and the DS-System.
DS-Client software, installed at the local or remote site on an existing or dedicated Windows, Macintosh, or Linux server, captures data from target backup machines. The DS-Client then conducts several data reduction processes, compresses, encrypts, and transmits the data via an IP WAN to the DS-System at the central location.
The DS-Client does not require installation of any backup agents on target servers, desktops, or laptops. The agent-less DS-Client fully integrates with NT domains, Trusts and Novell NDS trees, and otherwise adopts the remote site’s existing LAN security settings. Using standard APIs, the DS-Client can remotely log-in to target backup systems, capture requested data, and securely manage transmissions to the central site. Utilizing delta blocking and common file elimination technologies, the DS-Client reduces the amount of raw data transmitted and stored at the onsite or off-site vault.
The DS-System can be installed on Linux and Windows platforms and manages the online storage repository (configured as direct-attached disk, NAS or SAN) for backup data transmitted from one or multiple DS-Clients.
Asigra software integrates a comprehensive feature set designed to maximize and accelerate data recoverability. An autonomic healing mechanism, for example, runs seamlessly in the background to identify and isolate corrupted or otherwise problematic files. As an added value, if a file is found to be unfixable, it is marked to be re-transmitted on the next scheduled backup. Another feature, the Local Restore tool, allows remote-office storage of versions of backup data files.This ensures that local users can restore critical data immediately and at LAN speed.
Additional Asigra tools include an Online File Summary, Long Term Storage policy-making, a Discovery Tool to automatically ascertain characteristics of primary data, Email Message Level Restore, Bare Metal Restore capability, Client and System Monitoring, and SNMP Integration.
Why it works?
The Asigra software eliminates the requirement for locally installed agents because it leverages the protocols, APIs, methods and functionality that platform, operating system, database, and other application vendors utilize for remotely accessing and managing their own systems. While other backup/restore solutions require a unique backup agent (installed on every target server, workstation, and laptop) for each type of system and application, the Asigra architecture integrates support for all major platforms and applications into a single, optimized software system comprised of just two major components: the DS-Client (just one installed at each remote site) and the DS-System (installed at the vaulting location).
Another advantage of the Asigra software is that it enables multi-level access controls.
At installation, the DS-Client is assigned privileges to establish access rights that match the requirements of the site or organization. The DS-Client, for example, might be assigned multiple credentials for the same network to allow the domain administrator to back up all systems, including servers and workstations, while enabling users to control the backups of individual workstations. The Asigra software has also been highly optimized to conserve both LAN and target-system CPU resources.
The Benefits of Agentless: Reduced Costs, Robust Security, Simpler Scaling.
Implementing an Asigra backup/recovery solution produces immediate and dramatic benefits. Compared to legacy agent-based alternatives, Asigra software offers:
Significant savings – Even if agents from traditional vendors were free, an Asigra solution would still enable huge reductions in operating expenses. As per an estimate, first year operating expenses alone approach $150,000 for an enterprise environment with 1,000 server agents. Annual server maintenance and operating expenses for this same configuration add up to nearly $60,000. Eliminating agents eliminates those costs that are in addition to the purchase price of agents.
Simple licensing – DS-Client licenses actually ARE free. The DS-System offers businesses a unique pay as you grow pricing model based on the aggregate amount of compressed data stored across the network. Simply purchase software the same as disk capacity—no license fees, no tracking, no overspending on site licenses—customers pay only for compressed capacity consumed.
One piece of software to install, manage, and diagnose – The Asigra software even self-upgrades, so there is no time-consuming and administrative-resource-draining pushing of agents or updates out to hundreds or thousands of remote-site systems.
WAN/LAN/CPU resource conservation – Asigra software runs with negligible impact on servers, workstations, and laptops, eliminating the CPU-cycle hits associated with agent-based solutions. Delta blocking, common file elimination and compression technologies also minimize impact on bandwidth and storage resources. While traditional agent-based backup/recovery solutions require implementation of high-speed pipes between the central data center and remote offices, Asigra enables the effective use of existing links such as DSL.
Robust, hardcoded security – Asigra software provides both ‘in-flight’ and ‘at-rest’ data protection, utilizing up to 256 bits for AES encryption keys to guarantee extremely safe data transfer and storage. And, it works within the organization’s security framework—there are no agents to open hacker-tempting ports in the firewall. With secure data transmission across an IP WAN, the Asigra solution helps businesses achieve compliance, minimize information loss liabilities, and protect customer confidence.
‘Elegant’ scaling – The DS-System is capable of elegantly scaling both in the dimensions of capacity and performance. This type of scalability is critical for environments with large numbers of remote sites, high-capacity data sets, and rapid high data growth. While agent-based solutions compound complexity in rapid growth environments, the Asigra agent-less backup/recovery solution easily accommodates new capacity, new applications, and new sites. Features such as integrated load-balancing ensure efficiency across multiple DS-System IP addresses.
Backup consistency, improved recoverability – The simplicity, efficiency, and security of the Asigra system promote implementation of consistent data backup programs across remote sites. Able to implement more frequent, successful backup processes, companies can significantly boost data recoverability in environments where success rates below 50% were once the norm.
| Installation, backup and restore support for: | |
| Operating Systems |
|
| Databases |
|
The list above is a representative list for new platforms supported in Asigra V10. For other versions not listed please contact Lakestyle.