A reliable business continuity strategy typically involves frequent partial backups, less frequent complete backups, and a combination of onsite and offsite storage of the backup media. This can be a daunting task for a small business with one office, but for an enterprise with many branch offices and a highly distributed backup infrastructure, it can be a nightmare.

A global namespace-driven, disk-to-disk-based business continuity strategy greatly improves data availability, while dramatically reducing the cost of tape media and hardware. What's more, if data needs to be restored, having a centrally located repository of backed-up data minimizes downtime and improves Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). This type of solution enables automatic data path failover, reducing downtime to seconds.

While tape excels as a backup medium, it also incurs substantial hardware and recurring media costs for each remote site, burdens IT administrators who must manage the process, and slows disaster recovery due to the number of tapes that must be processed. Disk-based, centralized backup eliminates the tape hardware and media costs for each branch office—as well as the associated administrative burden. Data is simply copied across a WAN—using byte-level file differencing replication to minimize bandwidth consumption—and backed up to a convenient, central location. Disaster recovery is equally streamlined. And IT personnel can monitor the process from a single GUI, freeing up time for more productive tasks.

The Brocade StorageX Global Namespace enables cost-effective failover across geographically distributed sites, while giving administrators a centralized way to manage the global failover process. Because administrators can manage storage on a logical, rather than a physical basis with a Global Namespace, the failover process can be completely transparent to users.

• Instant failover for users across different devices and/or locations
• One-step near-line storage integration for replication and failover
• Automated, policy-based setup and execution of business continuity processes
• Thousands of users can be failed over in one automatic step
• Simple, intuitive GUI makes business continuity planning and execution simple for administrators

• Brocade StorageX