Cloud backup software has come a long way. Today, the average software has powerful and sophisticated features. One of the best breeds of software in the cloud backup space is Backup Technology Limited (BTL) software. BTL’s software is powered by Asigra, a leading cloud backup enabling company since 1986. The most striking feature of BTL is its agentless architecture. Professional data administrators will always appreciate the advantages of BTL’s software. Security is never compromised, as it comes with encryption key that can save and recover data to and from the vault systems. The complexity and size of problems are thereby minimised; upgrades are centralised from the vault system, and data backup and recovery becomes a streamlined process. Furthermore, licensing is easy to set up, as a single license acquisition takes care of all the future needs of the organisation.
BTL manages file databases intelligently. Every single file of the database is identified and managed by proprietary algorithm, and the end-user can remain completely unaware of the intricacies that enables the backup of different kinds of data files, from multiple operating system environments, using a single interface.
How does all this happen? BTL’s cloud backup technology consists of two components: the DS-Client, and the DS-System. The DS-Client is installed on a dedicated Windows, Macintosh or Linux server and target backup machines are identified. The DS-Client also allows versioning, which means that backups can be available for a quick restore.
Using standard APIs on the target machines, the system automatically logs into the backup system and captures the data securely. The DS-Client, then processes, compresses, encrypts and transmits the data from the target machines using delta blocking and common file elimination technologies, commonly knows as de-duplication. The system is very intelligent in that it runs un-interrupted in the background, segregating corrupted files; correcting them or marking them for re-try at a later date.
The DS-System is at the core of Asigra Cloud Backup technology. It is installed in an enterprise or service provider data center, or in an IaaS cloud. The DS-System efficiently aggregates data from all remote DS-Clients and maintains, manages and validates the online backup repository.
BTL allows the use of Local Restore tool in order to speed up LAN restorations. Depending on your needs, you can use such tools, as:
• Long Term Storage Policy Making Tool — is a discovery tool to automatically ascertain characteristics of primary data, Client and System Monitoring, Email Message Level Restore, Bare Metal Restore capability, and SNMP Integration.
• File Summary Tool — provides both a synopsis and detailed scanned file information. The report is easily modified with several filters allowing a group of files to be specifically analysed.
• LAN Discovery Tool — identifies the characteristics of data, such as when the last time it was accessed, its age, and file size. This will help the user to make business decisions about how they want their data stored and recovered.
In Part II of this series, we will further discuss BTL’s main features in details.
