Earlier this week we released our list of five key considerations for disaster planning, highlighting the point that the right cloud storage gateway can deliver where traditional storage falls short. The Nasuni Filer in particular enables fast, reliable, simple, cost-effective, and secure disaster recovery. Many of our customers have signed on with Nasuni because of the backup and DR benefits, and we're going to use this post to demonstrate just how simple it can be, starting with the initial backup process and then jumping ahead to the aftermath of a disaster.
The entire backup process consists of just 4 – or let’s say 3.5 – steps. First, you identify what data set or sets that you want to copy over to the Filer and, eventually, the cloud.
Next, you create a share in the Filer. To do so, you log in, look for the “Shares” tab in the management UI, and click on “add new share.” That’s it. The hardest part is picking a good name for the share.
Step 3 and 3.5 involve mapping a drive from your Windows fileserver to the Filer and copying all the directories over to the Filer. At this point you’ll want to use a data mover program. There are a number of good options, including Xcopy and XXCopy, if you’re going from Windows-to-Windows, or, if you have a Linux system or a Mac, rsync may be a great option as well.
These are all simple, powerful tools, but for Windows-to-Windows, we’d recommend Robocopy as I suspect most seasoned administrators will agree. It is built into Windows, so it’s free, and since it’s native to the environment, things like access controls and permissions are preserved during the data migration. This isn’t always the case with other programs, and it’s a pretty huge consideration when you’re moving data over to the Filer.
At the same time, you do have a choice. You can choose which permissions you want preserved, such as whether it should try again in the event that it fails to migrate a file, if you want to keep a log file, etc.
Once you set Robocopy in motion, you’re done. The program migrates your data to the Filer, which begins pushing it to the cloud after it is chunked, deduplicated, compressed, and encrypted. After just 3.5 steps, your backup is complete, and new files or changes to existing files are automatically backed-up to the cloud on a regular basis.
Now let’s imagine the unthinkable happens. Disaster strikes. Your locally stored data is gone. Typically, recovery would take anywhere from hours to days to weeks, but with the Nasuni Filer, you can be back up in 15 minutes.
All you need to do is download and install a new copy of the Filer. During the installation process, we ask you to log back in, and Nasuni will recognize that you used to have a Filer.
Keep in mind, we don’t have any access to your data – we simply recognize you as a customer with an existing Filer. After this authorization, your new copy of the Filer connects to your chosen cloud storage provider using your unique cloud credentials. All your metadata is reinstantiated right away. After just 15 minutes, clients will be able to see their files where they expect them to be, and start pulling them down from the cloud as needed.
With the Filer, DR is fast, simple, and cost-effective. Time is money, and if disaster does strike, you shouldn’t have to wait days or even hours for your data. You should be able to keep your business running smoothly.
We’ll be covering more DR-related issues, and touting the strengths of cloud storage, in the coming weeks, so follow us for insights, tutorials, and more. And please feel free to write us at feedback@nasuni.com to let us know what you think.