BaaS Services for the backup of servers, applications and virtual machines
The StorEasy Cloud was designed for one purpose, to protect data with state-of-the-art architectures built exclusively to ensure maximum security and business continuity.
StorEasy has abandoned the inefficient storage architectures designed for legacy platforms and adapted to the cloud, to turn instead to an innovative, high performance scale-out architecture able to provide very short backup and restore times.
Comparison of storage technologies for backups: what you should know before entrusting your data to a generic Cloud Service Provider
Not everyone is aware that the vast majority of storage systems available for data backup, using deduplication and compression, were designed and engineered for legacy platforms over 10 years ago. These storage architectures are insufficient today to guarantee the performance, scalability and levels of security required by modern enterprise applications and still less the cloud environment. Despite this, the vast majority of CSPs still use these earlier systems as a matter of course.
Generally these products are based on a single Intel X86 server and an operating system (Linux) running deduplication software and a RAID controller for data protection. The RAID controller is installed inside the server and manages a number of hard disks (depending on the model) contained within a standard 19″ format chassis. High availability is achieved through a second server that commonly remains in standby waiting for a potential failure and does not contribute to the optimization of overall performance.
The server that oversees all these operations, including the deduplication algorithm and compression manages a huge workload, creating a lot of work for the CPU (machine cycles), especially during data deduplication. This generates high latency as workloads (data streams) and managed storage capacity (number of disks) increase. Since each hard disk has its own physical address, the greater the storage capacity, the more disks will be addressed and managed by the RAID controller (installed inside the server). On the other hand, it has a limited number of channels (generally 3 to 5) to address hundreds of mechanisms. This mismatch is graphically illustrated in the figure below.
Drastic reduction in performance with traditional scale-up deduplication systems
Rehydration of data, the Achilles' heel of traditional deduplication systems
The StorEasy Cloud was designed for one purpose, to protect data with state-of-the-art architectures built exclusively to ensure maximum security and business continuity.
The rehydration of data, which returns the data to its original format, is an extremely expensive process in terms of machine cycles for the single server that directs all activities and translates into extremely long rehydration waiting times. As can easily be imagined, data recovery can become a serious problem in an emergency.
RAID protection is inadequate for current operational needs
The majority of backup storage systems still use RAID protection to ensure business continuity in the event of a disk failure. It is a technology born in the late 1980’s when “hard disks” offered capacity in the order of GBs, while today capacity has reached 12TB in the 3.5″ format discs. RAID protection requires exceedingly long reconstruction times (see details below). Moreover the restoration of a disk leads to a marked performance degradation that results in a drastic fall in the data flow necessary for backup and restore, all the while having to meet demanding SLAs, especially if part of a Disaster Recovery plan.
In next generation cloud storage architectures RAID protection has been replaced with more secure and efficient technologies such as Erasure Coding, or through multiple data copies distributed among different storage nodes. These techniques are able to deliver superior data protection and much quicker reconstruction times that do not impact business.
| Disk capacity | Reconstruction Time |
|---|---|
| 4 TB | > 10 hours |
| 8 TB | > 20 hours |
| 12 TB | > 1 day |
The time has come to turn the page and leave behind these outmoded storage architectures for Backup and Disaster Recovery
StorEasy offers a next generation Backup and Disaster Recovery platform that meets the most stringent SLA criteria required by today’s business needs.
Poor service levels can create havoc for company processes with serious consequences for the firm. To get round this problem in the delivery of BaaS services each individual service was designed to ensure continuity of business and performance. Thus StorEasy has abandoned earlier inefficient storage architectures to offer an innovative, high performance scale-out architecture dedicated to Backup and Disaster Recovery that provides significantly better performance than the market standard.
StorEasy, a next generation Backup and D/R storage platform
The StorEasy infrastructure is based on a scale-out architecture that ensures linear performance as the volume of data and storage capacity grows
A scale-out architecture brilliantly avoids downtime in an area like cloud services where it is essential that upgrades, maintenance and potential faults have the least possible impact on customers’ business and the services suffer no degradation during these events.
RAID protection is inadequate for today’s operational needs
The traditional RAID layout has been replaced by Erasure Coding technology, a secure and efficient technique that provides much higher protection and very rapid reconstruction which does not impact business, 50 times faster than traditional RAID reconstruction. Erasure Coding technology ensures that your data is always available, even in the event of a disk or node failure. StorEasy’s zero downtime scale-out architecture is a fundamental building block in guaranteeing the reliability, flexibility and performance required to deliver BaaS services. These important investments in cutting-edge storage infrastructure puts StorEasy ahead of the market in guaranteeing business continuity, security and reliability thanks to a modern architecture, purpose-built to deliver cloud storage services.
Dedicated on-premise deduplication appliance
Where the client’s backup software does not have deduplication and compression functionality, StorEasy can supply a dedicated appliance (physical or virtual) to provide in-line deduplication and compression to backup data to the StorEasy Cloud.
The appliance gives you the option to make a local backup copy (stored in the appliance) and a second security copy in the StorEasy Cloud. The appliance offers an extremely secure and reliable backup and D/R architecture that ensures the performance and capacity to meet your needs with a wide range of possible configurations.
On-premise backup deduplication significantly optimizes your use of local space to store data, as well as a huge increase in transfer speed to the StorEasy Cloud even where you do not have particularly fast transmission bandwidth. In-line backup deduplication and compression are configurable options that can be ignored if the client’s backup products implement this function natively.
Connection security
The connections between the client’s server and StorEasy’s infrastructure use encryption systems (AES), and security protocols (AES, SSL). Meanwhile the data saved is encrypted and accessible exclusively to customers. StorEasy’s technology and security standards are fully compliant with the privacy, accessibility and secure archiving regulations.