Overview

FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) technology reinvents the way you back up and recover data. Moving far beyond failure-prone once-a-day tape backup models, FalconStor CDP combines local and remote protection into a cost-effective, unified, disk-based solution that lets you recover data back to the most recent transaction. Your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) shrinks to mere seconds.

But protection is only part of the solution. FalconStor CDP software delivers fast, reliable recovery, bringing your business back online sooner than you thought possible. Using a wealth of sophisticated technologies — including application integration, physical-to-virtual recovery, and WAN-optimized replication — entire systems can be restored in under ten minutes. Lost files can be recovered in two minutes. And all of this can occur without the need to touch backup software or run a "restore job." Data is protected in its native format, and instantly accessible. Your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) changes from hours to minutes, minimizing system downtime and economic impact.

Features

• TOTALLY Open™ Architecture
  Supports direct attached/internal storage, networked storage over iSCSI or FC, and physical and virtual server environments. Supports major enterprise operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX.
• Flexible Data Capture to Meet RPO
  Continuous or periodic (point-in-time) protection helps you meet all RPO requirements. Data journaling protects information at a per-write level of granularity, letting you recover up to the last bit of information written before a service outage. Periodic snapshots give you numerous bootable recovery images based on a pre-set schedule, such as every hour or every few hours, delivering far more recovery points than typical nightly tape backups do. Journaling and snapshots can be used on the same volume.
• Flexible Deployment Model
  Use host-based agents or SAN fabric-based devices.
• Data Mobility
  The FalconStor CDP solution stores data in its native format, not in a proprietary backup format. This allows you to quickly mount the data via any appropriate host server, providing faster, more flexible recovery.
• Any-to-any Data Replication
  Replicate data from any vendor's primary storage environment to any other storage device. Use any disk storage that meets your price/performance requirements without the vendor lock-in associated with array-based replication tools. Replication also crosses SAN protocols. For example, you can replicate data from your production FC SAN to a stand-by iSCSI SAN, thereby reducing DR site overhead.
• WAN-optimized Data Replication
  Patented FalconStor disk scanning technology dramatically reduces replication bandwidth utilization by 70-90% or more depending on application behavior. Built-in data compression further decreases bandwidth requirements, letting you significantly cut back on WAN capacity and protect many more applications than with your current bandwidth allocation.
• Thin Provisioning
  Maximizes disk utilization, reduces storage costs and power consumption.
• Application Integration
  Application-aware Snapshot Agents, including Microsoft Windows-certified agents, ensure 100% transactional integrity. Support is provided for major enterprise messaging and database platforms, including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, Lotus Notes/Domino, Sybase, Informix, DB2, GroupWise, Progress, and SAP. The FalconStor CDP solution supports clustering software, including Windows clustering and Oracle RAC.
• Remote Boot Support
  In the event of primary storage failure, you can access FalconStor CDP storage to restart physical servers via FC/iSCSI HBA booting.
• Windows-specific Management Agents
  A FalconStor DiskSafe™ agent protects DAS and SAN for Microsoft Windows-based application servers. You can configure and manage protection directly from within the Windows server, including setting snapshot schedules and mounting snapshot images through an easy-to-use GUI.
• Central Client Manager
  A Central Client Manager lets you configure and monitor protected servers from a single point of view. Creating snapshot schedules per groups of servers or applications reduces management time and helps ensure consistent protection.
• Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Recovery
  You can use FalconStor CDP snapshot images to quickly restart failed physical systems as virtual machines.
• Large LUN support
  The FalconStor CDP solution supports individual LUNs up to 16TB in size.
• Accelerate Backup to Tape
  Where tape is required, FalconStor CDP technology enables host-free, SAN-based backup that eliminates the need for backup agents and imposes no impact on your production environment. Backup speed increases dramatically, by as much as 1000% (moving from a 1Gb LAN-based backup to a 10Gb SAN backup).

Requirements

The FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) Virtual Appliance for VMware Infrastructure is a pre-built, pre-configured, TOTALLY Open™ and ready-to-run software application packaged with an operating system in a virtual machine. Offering advanced disk-based data protection technology, it protects physical and virtual servers simultaneously for continuous data availability, eliminating data loss from corruption or failure.

The CDP Virtual Appliance for VMware Infrastructure offers the industry's fastest, most granular recovery of mission-critical databases, messaging data, files, and even entire systems, and enables you to consolidate data assets and simplify data protection. The result is a more flexible, cost-effective, simplified infrastructure that reduces storage management overhead and rapidly adapts to changing business requirements.

• Recover files and databases in 1 minute
• Virtual-to-virtual (V2V) recovery in 2 minutes
• Mailbox recovery in 3 minutes
• Physical-to-physical (P2P) recovery in 5 minutes
• Physical server-to-virtual machine (P2V) recovery in 10 minutes
• Recover entire site in 30 minutes

• Fully integrated with the VMware ESX server
• Up to 64 TimeMark delta snapshots per backup image
• HyperTrac™ Backup Accelerator eliminates backup window and impact on host performance
• Remote replication against unplanned disasters