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AssureVault, a leading online data protection and recovery company, selected Peer Software’s PeerSync to provide real-time data replication
This is a story fundamentally about trust. Of course, there are levels of trust, from the kind of trust required to hand over single document to the trust required to hand over an entire file cabinet to the trust required to hand over a hard drive. Or, as in the case with AssureVault, the trust required to handle an essential aspect of their business.
In just five years, AssureVault has emerged as one of the industry’s premier online data protection and recovery management providers. Hundreds of organizations trust them with their most critical assets – their data – secure in the knowledge that AssureVault will keep their files safe and available on demand, while facilitating efficient, low-impact data transfer. About a year and half ago, AssureVault began a period of dramatic growth, driven by surging demand for online data backup and storage (as well as their reputation in the marketplace for superior service and responsive support).
“Over that time, we saw a tripling of revenue from online backup, to the point where we’re now handling 12 TB of data on a daily basis, while moving millions of files nightly,” said AssureVault’s founder and President, Dennis Tallerico. “Our service runs on several robust file servers, each with 8 CPUs and 16 gigs of memory. As volume increased, we needed to find a way to efficiently and reliably replicate all this data from our primary server to a secondary device -- something robust enough to handle 8 to 10 system events a second.”
Tallerico began what turned out to be a six month evaluation process, putting a total of five products through the paces.
“We evaluated each product for about a month or a month and a half,” said Tallerico. “We knew what we were looking to do was going to be demanding. Data changes so rapidly – we needed the ability to replicate storage systems of all client data and sync replication sets in real time. We needed a difficult to find combination of flexibility and functionality, with a nominal footprint. We spoke to each company’s technical support team to best understand each product’s feature set, the extent of its flexibility and how it met our criteria.”
According to Tallerico, “PeerSync won hands down. It had the functionality, flexibility, and real time capability.”
Since its introduction in 1993, PeerSync has been used by thousands of organizations to keep their data secure, in-sync and available continuously, without interruption. PeerSync unobtrusively monitors connections between storage points (e.g., server to server, desktop to server, desktop to desktop) and provides a range of manual, scheduled and/or real-time file backup and synchronization routines. In addition, users can select multiple source-target configurations for speed and flexibility when dealing with multiple computers and storage devices.
Initially, Tallerico had PeerSync configured to scan the entire user directory on the primary server; the scan went five levels deep. The first level contained 256 folders, with 256 folders below that – in all, 32,000 folders were scanned, putting a tremendous hit on system resources.
“I knew the enhanced scanning* feature figures out if you have a directory called Users and will just scan the entire user directory and all subdirectories, and update on the target. One of Peer’s senior software engineers showed me how to fine tune PeerSync to efficiently handle the maximum amount of jobs without compromising system performance. He showed me a diagnostics screen showing PeerSync doing real-time replication, while reducing CPU use from 40% to 10-15%. The enhanced scanning feature reduced memory demand from 550 MB to 45 MB. It also reduced excluded files from thousands a day to 300 over 5 days. The ability to configure and tweak and optimize performance to suit your specific requirements and needs is very impressive.”
(* Enhanced Scan Processing provides users with the ability to dynamically build multiple sub Jobs from each Job in a Profile for parallel processing of folder scans, shortening the time of completion for scanning.)
Tallerico then ran into another unexpected problem. “RoboBAK, one of our applications used in our online backup services, was being monitored by PeerSync. Problems arose because the backup utility was continually writing files to the PeerSync monitored disk, which conflicted with PeerSync’s real-time monitoring and replication. Again, we got one of Peer’s senior software engineers on the phone who in no time showed us how to configure PeerSync to delay real-time event monitoring, which allowed files to be committed to disk via the backup utility, after which it initiated the replication process. It was another example of the functionality and flexibility built into PeerSync…it’s always good to know that a piece of software not only does what you need it to do, but packs features and settings that enable you to address unforeseen issues down the road.”
Soon, AssureVault will be moving its secondary server to another location 30 miles from their present location. “PeerSync will enable us to continue to perform high-volume replication seamlessly across a dedicated fiber circuit. PeerSync gives us – and our customers – a failsafe means of assuring that critical data is always available and readily accessed. In today’s difficult environment, there’s simply no margin for error, particularly when it comes to an organization’s data. We operate with the knowledge that our customers are counting on us to be flawless. And we understand the burdens that come with the trust they’ve put in us…so you can appreciate the significance of the trust we’ve put in PeerSync. Trust doesn’t come over night; it must be earned. From the way the product works to Peer Software’s remarkably responsive support, PeerSync has more than earned ours.”
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