Solution Spotlight: Carbonite Recover

The fastest way to recover is to relocate the workload to another server, but, for most businesses, redundant hardware, server space and additional human resources are far too costly to make this a viable option.

The clock starts ticking the minute a critical business system goes down. As lost revenue piles up and productivity drops, resuming normal operations becomes paramount.

The fastest way to recover is to relocate the workload to another server, often at a secondary location. But for most businesses, the redundant hardware, server space and additional human resources are far too costly to make this a viable option. So, in the face of potentially devastating outages, many IT departments simply live with the risk.

The solution is Carbonite Recover—a disaster recovery-as-a-service offering. By securely replicating critical systems from your primary environment to the cloud, Carbonite Recover ensures that an up-to-date secondary copy is available for failover at any moment, minimizing downtime as well as costs. Your clients pay for what they use, when they use it – and not for idle resources.

While less critical workloads are secured through traditional backup, Carbonite Recover keeps systems that are essential for critical business operations online and accessible, no matter what happens at the source.

Real-time Replication and Near-Zero Downtime

With Carbonite Recover, replication from the primary server to the cloud happens continuously at the byte level. The replica at the secondary cloud location is constantly synchronizing with the source, ensuring the currency of the data. Any outage that exceeds the failure threshold you’ve established results in immediate failover to the cloud-based replica. The total downtime, or RTO, is measured in minutes, and the recovery point (RPO) is only seconds old, virtually eliminating the business impact of the outage.

Engineered for Complex IT Environments

The failover of a single server is fairly straightforward, but most systems are made up of interdependent, multi-tier applications. Carbonite Recover is designed to support key requirements of complex IT environments, including:

Orchestration – Multi-tier applications often have a specific boot order, and additional needs for custom automation, to ensure the application is reconstituted appropriately. The orchestration and automation built into Carbonite Recover, along with custom script points, support these complex use cases across groups of servers.
Performance and bandwidth – By sending tiny amounts of data across the wire on an ongoing basis, Carbonite Recover minimizes performance impact, both on the servers being protected and on the network.
Security – All data is secured by AES-256 encryption, both in flight and at rest.
DNS – Once your systems fail over, Carbonite Recover automates DNS updates to seamlessly redirect your users to the new systems.

Testing that Builds Confidence
In an outage or disaster, confidence in data protection systems is paramount. Without it, many organizations do not trigger disaster procedures, which leaves them exposed.

The best way to mitigate this is through regular testing, which is available anytime with Carbonite Recover. These self-service tests will not disrupt operations, and our award-winning customer support team is available to triage any issues that emerge. The best business continuity plans are tested once per quarter, so we’ve engineered the solution to support regular testing at your convenience.

How It Works

Initially, you’ll log in to the console, and the solution will push the agents that perform replication onto the systems being protected. It will then configure the service. Our award-winning professional services team will engage with you to ensure the configuration is complete, and to perform the initial failover test.

Once configured, your systems will send data continuously to the Carbonite cloud. This will occur at the byte level, minimizing any performance impact to the systems or the network.

When an outage occurs, you can trigger a failover from the Carbonite console. Within minutes, the secondary systems in the cloud will spin up and be ready for use. The data on them is barely a few seconds old, and most users won’t even sense a disruption in service.

Once you’re ready to fail back to your primary systems, the process is easily reversed. Carbonite Recover is supported by our exceptional technical team, who will ensure your client’s data protection plan is operational and provide support during an outage.

Key benefits:

Recovery times and recovery points measured in minutes or seconds
Orchestration for multi-tier applications, with boot order, scripting and automated discovery of systems in your environment
Non-disruptive, self-service testing
Bandwidth-optimized for limited network impact
Built-in encryption, both at rest and in flight
Carbonite technical support, from initial deployment to testing to failover and failback
Support for exotic platforms like iSeries and AIX with our Carbonite Disaster Recovery offering

Supported platforms: