Data Protection and Recovery Software

Data protection and recovery software is focused on protection, restore, and recovery of data in the event of physical or logical errors. Included within the data protection and recovery market are the submarkets discussed below.

Data Protection Software

Data protection software and add-on modules schedule a point-in-time copy of a defined data set to tape, disk, or optical devices, and are used to recover part or all of the data set if needed because of logical or physical error or site disaster. Included are library and tape media management tools. Although tape is the most common backup medium, many products support backup to disk, and some take full advantage of the increased recovery performance associated with direct-access disk storage. Backup is often used in conjunction with snapshot and data replication software to improve data protection performance. If using traditional tape backup products, recovering data from a backup set generally requires the initiation of a separate process. Representative vendors and products include the following:

• IBM (Tivoli Storage Manager)
• Symantec (NetBackup)

Continuous Data Protection Software

Continuous data protection (CDP) software, also referred to as continuous backup, pertains to products that track and save data to disk so that information can be recovered from any point in time, even minutes ago. CDP uses technology to continuously capture updates to data in real time or near real time, offering data recovery in a matter of seconds. CDP systems may be block, file, or application based and can provide fine granularities of restorable objects to highly variable recovery points. Representative vendors and products include the following:

• Storactive (LiveBackup)
• XOsoft (Enterprise Rewinder)

Bare Metal Restore Software

This standalone software makes a system-level host image from the operating system up to the file system configuration on tape or disk, which is used for system-level recovery of the entire host if needed because of a physical hardware error. Backup products that have a bare metal restore module are included under the data protection software submarket. Representative vendors and products include the following:

• Acronis (True Image Enterprise Server)
• Symantec (LiveState Recovery Manager)

Virtual Tape Library Software

This software presents a virtualized view of physical tape drives and media to a host, thus emulating traditional tape devices and tape formats and acting like a tape library with the performance of modern disk drives. During a virtual tape library (VTL) process, data is deposited onto disk drives just as it would be deposited onto a tape library, only faster. A VTL generally consists of a virtual tape appliance or server and VTL software that emulates traditional tape devices and formats. Representative vendors and products include the following:

• Diligent (VTF Open)
• FalconStor (Virtual Tape Library)

Backup/Recovery Reporting Software

This software is designed for heterogeneous, standalone backup reporting and management across different backup applications, configurations, and locations. Reports are generated on backup environment parameters such as backup job status, tape media capacity, backup performance, and so on. Representative vendors and products include the following:

• Bocada (Bocada Enterprise)
• WysDM (WysDM for Backups)