Organizations deployed server virtualization in production environments, are placing a backup client agent in the host

Asigra announced availability of a research report entitled Asigra’s VMware Optimized Backup from the IT analyst firm, Enterprise Strategy Group. The report provides insight into the value of Asigra’s agentless backup and recovery solution compared with agent-based solutions when deployed in virtualized server environments. The ESG brief precedes a broader report, Business Resilience for VMware Environments, which focuses on data protection options for VMware and highlights agentless backup and recovery for VMware.

ESG characterizes the adoption rate of server virtualization as ‘phenomenal,’ and notes the dramatic effect server virtualization has already had across IT organizations. Rapid adoption is driving the need for backup and recovery solutions optimized to protect VMware environments and Asigra’s agentless software platform delivers on the requirements for highly efficient and feature-rich application and data protection.

In a survey of 709 enterprises on the rate of server virtualization adoption performed by ESG, 48% of enterprises surveyed plan to adopt server virtualization within the next 12-24 months and 52% already have virtualized server environments. In the same survey, 57% of respondents stated that their ability to better implement disaster recovery is a factor for deploying server virtualization.

Unobtrusive Virtual Server Data Protection According to ESG, “Asigra’s approach to protecting virtual server environments offers several advantages when compared to traditional backup solutions. For organizations that have deployed server virtualization in production environments, a majority are placing a backup client agent in the host or guest OS. While these approaches most closely reflect how backup was performed in the physical world (and therefore is simple to understand and configure), they place unnecessary strain on the host’s resources compared with an agentless approach. Agentless backup also eliminates the need to configure agent technology in every virtual machine, as with traditional approaches.”

“Reducing capital and operational costs, better utilizing resources and creating cost-effective disaster recovery strategies are just a few of the reasons why companies-both small and large-are deploying server virtualization,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “Asigra’s next-generation backup software stands apart from traditional backup solutions due to its agentless architecture and has compelling capabilities to support VMware environments.”

Asigra, a 20-year member of the backup vendor community, stands out because it employs a non-intrusive software architecture that optimizes backup operations and management, delivering enterprise data protection from the core to the edge. Unlike backup solutions that have per-server and/or per-client licensing, Asigra’s solution is capacity-based, with licensing based on the amount of de-duplicated, compressed data stored. Asigra Televaulting^TM requires only one full backup, and thereafter it performs incremental backups (only the block-level changes made since the last full or incremental backup are transmitted and stored). These changes are collected by a single piece of software installed at each location, where the data is additionally de-duplicated across all physical and virtual locations, compressed and encrypted before transfer to the staged backup server.

Televaulting for Virtual Server Backup and Recovery Asigra delivers pro-virtualization backup and recovery, giving multi-national enterprises with these environments the most powerful protection levels available. With 64-bit Televaulting, Asigra addresses the shortcomings of alternative backup and recovery solutions for protecting virtualized server environments by providing:

- Agentless backup optimized for virtualized serverenvironments
- A pro-virtualization pricing model
- Any-to-any restore capability (P2P, P2V, V2V, V2P)
- Live VM backup
- Fast and simple implementation and management
- Centralized management of VM backup and recoveryfrom the core to the edge
- File-level recovery at the VM and guest OS level
- Bare metal restore

“Asigra has made a name for itself by addressing the challenges associated with ROBO backup, as well as capitalizing on an MSP model,” concluded Whitehouse. “With the widespread adoption of virtual machine technology, and more specifically VMware, Asigra has an opportunity to address one of the biggest concerns that organizations have with the ‘virtual world’ - backup and recovery.”