Press Release (U.K.)

First Backup Lifecycle Management Solution Now Part of Asigra's Portfolio
ILM-Type Agentless Backup and Archiving Includes Certificate of Destruction Slashes Costs While Improving Recovery Time Objectives

London, 6th March 2006, Asigra, the technology specialists in agentless distributed backup and recovery software for network computing, today announced Backup Lifecycle Management (BLM), an extension to Asigra’s Televaulting for Enterprises 6.0 that integrates full data lifecycle management functionality into the Televaulting backup platform to control storage costs by moving backup and archival data to the most cost-effective storage medium.

By extending ILM functionality into the backup arena, Asigra is addressing a gap in conventional ILM solutions that do a good job of managing active primary data, but largely ignore backup archives,” said Eran Farajun, executive vice president of Asigra. “Effective management of backup and archival data files is equally critical when it comes to controlling the cost of enterprise storage, ensuring fast and simple recovery of backup files and meeting the legal requirements of compliance data,” said Farajun. “The addition of Asigra BLM into the Televaulting for Enterprises backup software addresses these customer needs with a solution that addresses the missing piece of data lifecycle management.”

“Backup data has its own unique lifecycle and it needs to be managed effectively to maximize IT resources,” said John Webster, a senior analyst with Data Mobility Group. “Backup lifecycle management is a critical part of the overall management of enterprise data. The cost advantages of tiered storage are well understood outside the backup arena. Similarly not all backup data is equal and needs to be placed on the appropriate device at specific points in its lifecycle. Treating all backup data the same is a simple solution, but it can be a very costly mistake.”

Asigra Backup Lifecycle Management is an ILM-aware solution encompassing three Asigra software components: Asigra Televaulting DS-System, which manages the data centre storage of Asigra’s backup solution; Asigra BLM Archiver, which manages the archiving of single or multiple DS-Systems and associated DS-Clients; and Asigra Televaulting Web Portal, which functions for both the DS-System and BLM Archiver to manage account creation and usage and restore requests to the BLM Archiver.

The BLM Archiver offers policy-based file archiving and is the centrepiece of Asigra’s BLM solution, managing archiving and restoration of data from Asigra Televaulting backup sessions for single or multiple company locations. The BLM Archiver serves two key functions: it frees up storage capacity used by stale files on DS-Systems storage, reducing the cost of inactive files on-line; and it creates restorable point-in-time copies of backup sets for historical reference to meet compliance objectives. Stale files are defined as files that are unlikely to ever be needed for restoration, but are still required to be protected. The BLM Archiver stages archive requests from multiple locations and then consolidates the data into a single, multi-tiered archive, assigning data to the most cost-effective storage tier based on policy-based criteria, such as applications and recovery time objectives.

In addition to consolidating the data archives and eliminating the cost of acquiring and maintaining archival storage hardware at each location, Asigra BLM shrinks the size of the archive by monitoring and eliminating duplicate backup files. Customers are left with a smaller archive with improved data recovery by staging data on the appropriate storage tier.

Asigra BLM comprehensively manages the backup period of the data lifecycle, governing the rules for when data is archived and how the data is indexed for long-term archiving and automated searching and restoration while ensuring compliant data destruction. Unlike many existing HSM tools that destroy only the primary realm and not backup copies that are stored on tape or disk, Asigra BLM produces a “destruction certificate” confirming that data on the BLM Archive disk was destroyed. Storage administrators have complete flexibility in establishing parameters for data destruction, such as the number of generations of data copies, time since last access, or event-based time considerations, including the number of years since a financial closing or since a patient medical treatment.

All data contained in the BLM Archive is self-contained, enabling the BLM Archiver to always respond to a restore request with a restorable package containing the requested data, including a compatible DS-Client image if required many years after the original file was backed up. Restore selections of files and directories are performed through the Web Portal GUI. Once the request is made, the BLM Archiver retrieves the required data from the consolidated archives or from the staging buffer and creates a restorable image of the required data. Users can optionally select a restore that packs all data into a single file for simplified transfer. The single file can be either used to create a copy and ship it to the end-user or it can be directly downloaded using the web portal for small size requests. The restore is performed using the DS-Client, by simply pointing the DS-Client to the BLM package mount path.

Asigra BLM provides cross-platform data consistency and standardization with a common data format and file structure across Windows and UNIX platforms that simplify data archiving and migration. Asigra BLM works with any file systems and any storage architecture, including DAS, NAS and SAN. Asigra provides the same broad platform and application support for its BLM solutions as Televaulting for Enterprises 6.0, with database backup support for Oracle 10g under Linux and Windows, PostgreSQL 8.0 support on Linux and Solaris, and hot DB2 backup, as well as client and host backup on VMware and native backup support for Macintosh OS X. Additionally, Asigra BLM integrates with third-party HSM products, such as ADIC StorNext, Legato DiskXtender, Sun StorEdgeSAM-FS, Tivoli Storage Manager and Veritas HSM.

Asigra Backup Lifecycle Management for Televaulting Version 6.0 is currently available with a starting price of GBP 3,100 per terabyte of data stored in the BLM Archive, and drops to GBP 1,150 per terabyte above 10 terabytes.

About Asigra
Asigra is the award-winning leader in remote office/branch office online backup/recovery with more than three petabytes of data under protection. Since 1986, the company’s agentless Televaulting solution has centralised data management and eliminated the pricing and performance problems created by agent-based tape backup software in multi-site enterprises. Televaulting addresses government and international regulatory compliance demands by backing up remote/branch office data to the data centre. Data is encrypted both “in-flight” over the WAN and “at rest.” Televaulting is offered by leading resellers and service providers worldwide, including HP, InTechnology and Zycko, to deliver highly secure data protection. Privately held Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with partner offices located globally. For more information, visit www.asigra.com.