CDP Hardware Requirements

[scubagal]

I hear the best thing going in data recovery is continuous data protection software. I know that there are lots of vendors out there selling this product. After being on several of the websites for CDP, I found that none of them are telling me what the software runs on. At least I couldn't find it anywhere. Does it run off of the server? If so, what if the server crashes, how do I recover the data? Sorry for the dumb questions, but I am just used to Backup Genie. Thanks.

[ErikD]

It is intended as a way to give more finesse in recovery of data. If you opt to setup a true CDP setup you can recover to within minutes of any event. The traditional backup scenario would have the recovery option of the previous nights backup only. So it is really an addition to your regularly scheduled backups to tape or disk. Simple scenario:

You do backups everynight starting at 8PM and finishing at 2AM. Joe comes into the office and creates an important document at 10AM, saves to a network share. 1PM he accidentally deletes this file. With CDP you can restore it to moments before it was deleted. Without you have no restore option.

Of course this is oversimplified and there are multiple other factors involved, but you get the general idea of what the technology is offering.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Here's a link to one of the products I'll be using soon...

http://sonicwall.com/us/products/backup_and_recovery.html

Basically a NAS box....client software gets installed on the computers you wish to protect.

It can backup data..and even entire disk images for bare metal restore.

If the server crashes..you boot from a CD...it finds the NAS box..you select the image you wish to restore..from there..pull back more current data in detail that you wish to restore.