DR For The Rest of Us
One of the biggest challenges for an SMB IT staff to overcome is how to deal with moving data off-site so that it is available for recovery. As we stated in our prior tests the NAS is often the first “server” purchased as an SMB grows. It becomes the hub of the organization and when it goes down the business can stop or at least grind to a halt. With our testing of the new Drobo B800fs well underway it was time for us to set up our second B800fs and put Drobo’s Drobo Sync feature through its paces to see how it could help SMB IT meet this challenge.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
George Crump, Senior Analyst
Related Reports
Going Wide Area with Drobo Sync
Upgrading to a Drobo Model B800fs
Data Recovery When it Matters Most
Test Drive - All Quiet on the DroboElite Front
Shared Storage for SMB Server Bundles
DroboElite Test Drive - Capacity Impulse Buy
DroboElite Test Drive - Maintaining Availability
DroboElite Test Drive - Surprise Free 81 Days
DroboElite Test Drive Part 4 - Multi-Platform
Data Robotics is a client of Storage Switzerland
Most SMBs count on copies of data being made to tapes or potentially some sort of cloud backup to cover themselves in case of a disaster. Disk backup appliances solve these issues but few small businesses can afford or cost justify the expense of having a NAS and a disk backup appliance AND another disk backup appliance in the remote location. While these services do provide backup protection they are not well suited for fast recovery. Data is stored in a closed format meaning it is not readily accessible. In the case of a cloud service, data is also closed and recovery has to come through the internet or an overnight shipment of media. The other problem is that none of them provide something to restore to get the data back and the business online. Meaning that the business has to wait for a new system to be purchased and set up.
Test Drive
Like most SMBs we are doing our initial sync locally, which unless you buy the two units upfront makes sense since you don’t want to sync a couple of TB’s across an internet connection. The next step is to move the device to a port in our lab that is set at 10mb per second so we can simulate the lower bandwidth of a WAN connection and see how Drobo Sync keeps up.
- Drobo Sync Test Drive
Enter Drobo Sync. A free replication feature that comes built into the B800fs. It performs asyncronus replication to a second Drobo in a DR location. This DR location could be as simple as the owners house or a colocation facility somewhere in town. While not as feature rich as some of the enterprise tools it gets the job done quickly and simply for the SMB. As you can see in our initial setup video, in less than 10 minutes we had the second system powered up and initial sync underway. I don’t think I’ve seen an easier DR process.
The key of Drobo Sync is that data lands in a live state and that the second unit is in place. If the primary office or just the Drobo itself goes down all you have to do is promote the second Drobo and you are back in production. Again we will show this promotion in part three of this series.
