Disaster Recovery Experts Speak Out (continued)

Re: Let's do the introductions...
by Jason Buffington (08-Nov-01 3:13 AM GMT) Howdy. As an introduction, my name is Jason Buffington (which you already know) and I serve as Director of Consulting and Education for NSI Software.

NSI Software makes DoubleTake and GeoCluster - both products providing software replication technologies for High Availability and Disaster Recovery solutions. Prior to my five years with them, I was with Cheyenne (think ARCserve) for three years. And a couple of systems integrators, along the way. My primary focus is understanding and solving Business Continuity goals. PS> I am an MCT, MCSE and Master CNE. OKAY - Now let's talk storage !!!

Re: Let's do the introductions...
by Bob Williamson (08-Nov-01 1:56 PM GMT)

Hello. My name is Bob Williamson, and I am the VP of Engineering at SteelEye Technology (www.steeleye.com).

SteelEye is all about offering affordable, easy to use high availability and disaster recovery solutions We have a particular interest in serving the small and medium size markets where cost and complexity of traditional HA and DR solutions have made it hard for these businesses to get the protection that they need.

I'm located in Columbia, South Carolina along with my great team of engineers. Prior to joining SteelEye, I worked for 15 years at NCR where I led a variety of UNIX and Windows development efforts. I love talking HA, feel free to drop me an email anytime: [email protected] Looking forward to talking with you.

Re: Let's do the introductions...
by Rick Weaver (08-Nov-01 8:58 PM GMT)

I'm Rick Weaver, Product Manager for BMC Software's Recovery and Storage Management Solutions group. BMC Software develops products to help the customer Assure Business Availability. We operate on the OS/390, UNIX, and NT platforms. Our recovery solutions are particularly robust in the Database application arena. We also assist the customer in leveraging the investment in Intelligent Storage Devices through our Snapshot Technology.

I'm a Certified Business Continuity Planner, and have worked in a Advanced Recovery Technology group designing and implementing technology solutions such as remote site mirroring and hot standby databases.

Re: Let's do the introductions...
by Wayne Lam (09-Nov-01 0:31 AM GMT)

Hi, I'm Wayne Lam, co-founder/VP of FalconStor Software, Inc.

Our Flagship product "IPStor" has specific features based on which data centers can establish and execute their Disaster Recover plan. IPStor can perform both synchronous and asynchronous mirroring/replication of data over either Fibre Channel and/or IP. In our view, DR is not just copying data, it must:

1. Take care of the initial synchronization of massive amount of data (for example, how long is it going to take to replicate 10 TB over T1 lines?)

2. Perform synchronization at the most granular level (i.e. sector or block level) to avoid keep sending large files over and over again.

3. Ensure not only Point-in-time consistency for each replication batch, but also, offer a way to ensure your live database file is transactionally complete, in other words, should you really need to make use of the replica at the DR center, make sure that image can be used immediately, without going thru a length process of database rebuilding or transaction roll-backs.

4. Allow for emergency access to the DR center's replica (promoting them as primary) during a disaster, and then, once the primary datacenter is back on line, allow for reverse-synchronization.

5. Replication/Mirroring should be performanced from WITHIN the storage farm across platform, what I called 'Serverless and Asymmetric' Serverless being not having to install, manage, and run 1000 copy of replication software at each server on different platforms; Asymmetric being the storage device in your DR center should NOT have to be the same as the ones in the primary datacenter.

FalconStor delivers on all of the above. I look forward to an exciting, challenging, and productive forum.

Re: Let's do the introductions...
by John H. Huelsing Jr. (09-Nov-01 2:30 PM GMT) My name is John Huelsing. I am a storage management analyst for General American Life/Metlife. I have been involved in Disaster Recovery in many capacities for over 15 years. Currently my main involvement is Catalog recovery/initialization and application data recovery. We use DFDSS pack backups for our system recovery and redundant backups, and DFDSSHSMABARS for application recovery. Some of the problems encountered during the Disaster Recovery test are data synchronization, critical file identification, and catalog entries without an attached dasd. file.