Vault Guys Target Remote Backup

LiveVault Corp.
today beefed up its backup and restore capabilities for remote offices (see LiveVault Adds Disk, Remote Backup). And in the process, the storage service provider (SSP) follows the lead of its main rival.

LiveVault InControl uses continuous data protection (CDP) software and a caching appliance called TurboRestore to speed local recovery of files by remote site from a centralized data center.

LiveVault isn't alone in targeting this market. Rival EVault Inc.s Continuum Server CDP appliance launched last October is also used for rapid restore of centrally stored files to remote sites (see EVault Intros Continuum Server).

It's a problem that looks big enough to support more than one solution. Gartner Inc.

principal analyst Adam Couture says a 2004 survey found that 80 percent of users polled were backing up their servers to onsite storage. “That’s a really bad practice,” Couture says. “Anything that destroys your server -- say a fire or a flood -- also destroys your backup.”

Backing up to the data center rather than to tape onsite would mitigate risks for remote sites. LiveVault CEO Bob Cramer says his larger customers have wanted to do that, but couldn’t find a solution that would restore data fast enough. “We were hearing from customers, ‘We have a lot of data at one site and a T1 connection. We can’t pump data fast enough over that bandwidth for recovery,’ ” Cramer says. “People want a one-to-two hour recovery time. We couldn’t address that market.”