Snap Enterprise Data Replicator™ Advanced (Snap EDR Advanced)

Snap Enterprise Data Replicator Advanced Overview:

Snap Enterprise Data Replicator Advanced (Snap EDR Advanced) is a high-performance, network-optimized software solution for managing and reporting on business-critical information throughout a distributed enterprise. Snap EDR Advanced is a breakthrough in affordable data mobility and management capabilities for the enterprise. This software suite sets a new price/performance standard for data management, allowing companies of any size to cost-effectively implement enterprise-wide backup, disaster-recovery and compliance operations.

• Provides sophisticated data management capabilities
• Powerful centralized control
• Optimized for effective data transport over high-latency networks
• Offers centralized policy-based management, protection, and archiving
• Lowers overall cost of storage

In addition to replicating and protecting data, many businesses need a robust way to manage the data that they have. Making the most cost-effective use of their data requires the ability to inventory systems to find out what data they have, archive older data away from expensive primary storage, and centralized backup and recovery to automatically move secondary data to long term storage. Building on the powerful data movement architecture of the Snap Enterprise Data Replicator (Snap EDR) by Adaptec, Snap EDR Advanced provides enterprises with sophisticated data management capabilities.

Three Steps to Data Lifecycle Management
The Snap EDR Remote Data Inventory solution is the right first step for getting remote data under full control. Once armed with accurate information about the data on your remote systems, you can begin to manage this data, using the same Snap EDR software implemented for Remote Data Inventory.

By adding the Snap EDR Remote Data Archive solution, you can implement a policy-based central archive and remove less-frequently used data from the remote storage server, while maintaining transparent end user access to the data. Snap EDR Remote Data Archive frees up valuable disk space at the edge, shortening backup times, and ensuring data is captured for compliance purposes.

With the Snap EDR Consolidated Backup solution, you can eliminate reliance on inefficient, unreliable and costly tape backups at each remote site with a single consolidated backup process that can lower annual backup costs by up to 75%.

Powerful, Centralized Control
All Snap EDR Advanced solutions are configured, scheduled, and monitored through the Snap EDR Management Console and are included with the Snap EDR Advanced License. Snap EDR’s intuitive installation and browser-based graphical interface provides step-by-step data management and job monitoring and control. The centralized control console can be accessed from anywhere on the network for global access, while email notifications can be set on a per job basis to increase the granularity of event monitoring. All this provides the extra flexibility administrators need for data management.

The console works in conjunction with the agents that live on each server. Once the job is established, the agents do the replication, working directly with each other.

Network Efficient
Snap EDR works well with any type of network, including high-latency networks. Where bandwidth is limited, Snap EDR can apply bandwidth throttles and use differential data transfer to send only the bytes that have changed from within files. Snap EDR delivers effective replication over high-latency networks.

Consolidated Backup and Recovery for Remote Data
Uncertainty from unreliable data backup processes at remote systems and branch offices can keep even the most experienced IT professionals awake at night. Individual tape backups at remote sites frequently mean relying on non-technical personnel, maintaining costly backup equipment and software at each office, and ensuring that an offsite storage process is being followed. Despite best efforts, many companies have an uncomfortably high backup failure rate at remote facilities, and as a result have an unacceptable level of risk and exposure.

Consolidated Backup and Recovery with Snap EDR Advanced lowers backup costs by eliminating the need for tape and equipment at remote locations. Backup images are consolidated onto a central server for instant online access to the latest backup images. With centralized management, backup processes for remote sites are automated, reducing or eliminating the dependency on remote staff for backup and recovery. All file attributes and permissions are retained for restoration. The Remote Data Backup module also works with Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Microsoft SQL 2000 to backup live data.

How it works:
Snap EDR automatically initiates backup consolidation on a scheduled basis. Backup processes are then executed by Snap EDR Agents, small software agents that reside on all Snap Servers, Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems involved in the process. Snap EDR identifies changes made to remote files since the last backup and moves only the bytes that have changed from those files to the central site, using network bandwidth efficiently and enabling central backup even for sites with narrow bandwidth. At the central site, consolidated data can be kept on disk for nearline backup, or backed up to tape using integrated BakBone NetVault software installed on all new GuardianOS Snap Servers or the existing tape backup software at the central site. If data is not received from any expected site, administrators will be notified, greatly reducing the risk of data loss.

Remote Data Inventory
To effectively manage data, you must have insight about the data, such as:

• How much data is there?
• Which files are still in use? When was the data last accessed?
• Who owns the data?
• What types of files are there?

However, getting access to this data profile information can be difficult, particularly on heterogeneous Snap Servers, Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems and attached storage outside the data center. The Snap EDR Advanced Remote Data Inventory solution automates profiling and central reporting of data on Snap Server, Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems, and any attached storage.

How it works:
Through the Snap EDR Management Console, the central web-based control center for Snap EDR, users select systems for data inventory, choose among a variety of file and data attributes to be reported, and schedule one-time or periodic ongoing profiling. Data inventory processes are then executed by Snap EDR Agents, small software agents that reside on all Snap Servers, Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems involved in the process. Snap EDR Agents will scan selected directories on the remote systems and capture file and data attributes, aggregate the information for all profiled nodes, and email the report to the designated user.

Remote Data Archive
In many companies, unmanaged, unused information is clogging valuable storage space, exceeding the capacity of backup equipment and tapes and causing missed backup windows. This problem is most acute on systems outside the data center or in branch offices where, often, there is no IT staff on hand to help manage the remote data. Statistics show that if a file has not been accessed in 90 days, it has only a 2% likelihood of ever being accessed again. Continually storing and backing up this infrequently used data is inefficient and costly. A best practice approach to handling this data is to archive unused data to lowercost disks while retaining easy end user access to the data.

The Snap EDR Advanced Remote Data Archive solution reclaims valuable storage by automating policy-based archive of files for Snap Servers, Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems, and any attached storage. By moving stale data from primary servers, administrators can increase storage utilization, and make archive storage for older files much more cost-effective.

How it works:
Archive processes, policies, and schedules are set up through the Snap EDR Management Console, a central web-based control module. Archive processes are then executed by Snap EDR Agents, small software modules that reside on all Snap Servers, Windows, UNIX, and Linux system involved in the process.

On a scheduled basis, the Snap EDR Agents will scan directories on the remote systems and identify files that should be archived according to the policies established. Some examples of archive policies are: time since last access, size of file, type of file, etc. The file is then moved from the remote system to a central archive. On Windows servers a small file “stub” is left in its place on the remote system, so that when archived files are requested (2% likelihood), the file is transparently retrieved from the archive location so that users can access the file normally.

Technical Specifications:

 

Applications:

Snap EDR Advanced provides additional functionality over Snap EDR by allowing the ability to provide all the remote data management of Snap EDR along with the additional ability to provide data inventory reports and Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) archival.

Snap EDR Advanced can be used to provide data protection between systems, data distribution, data consolidation, disaster recovery, and storage savings through HSM functionality.

 

Documentation:

Download the Snap EDR Advanced Datasheet (PDF).