rCloud is a disaster recovery solution for SMBs that can reduce the recovery period for physical and virtual environments to minutes instead of days. Through its simple interface, rCloud can restore virtual production server environments in less than fifteen minutes by hosting virtualised images of the local server in a remote cloud. IT service providers can now help customers gain immediate access to business critical applications through any internet connected web browser.
“Backup software has been around for over three decades,” explains Eric Webster, chief revenue officer at Doyenz, “the real issue is timely recovery that allows a business to get access to critical applications and data in the event of a hardware failure or more serious site disruption. Doyenz solves this problem for the SMB with a cost effective and proven service.”
Doyenz says that until the recent advances in virtualisation technology and ubiquitous fast internet access, true business continuity required a separate site able to host an identical IT infrastructure with costly replication technologies needed to maintain synchronisation of data and systems.
“This approach is fine for larger organisations but for an SMB, the costs and complexities are simply prohibitive,” comments Webster, “We designed rCloud to specifically meet the needs of IT service providers who, when it comes to disaster recovery, are looking for a cloud based solution that’s easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and can offer their clients fast access to business critical applications and data.”
IT service providers can use rCloud to protect both VMware based virtualised environments as well as traditional Microsoft Windows servers running directly on bare metal. Using a ShadowProtect backup solution from StorageCraft, an entire application server can be replicated into the local UK rCloud data centre, hosted by Interxion. As the applications change and data grows over time, the rCloud agent sends the incremental data to rCloud to maintain a virtual replica of the SMB's local servers. This replication process uses any internet connection and can take over night or during a quiet period depending on the preference of the customer.
This replica IT production environment is retained by rCloud and can be activated at any time to test the viability of the business continuity position. Only in the event of a local outage at the SMB site does the virtual copy start up to provide a true remote production server.
“The SMB now has remote access to critical applications and data while the process of rebuilding a local server or relocating to a temporary office takes place,” comments Webster, “The fact that we are using a local data centre reduces the latency issue of accessing applications via the internet.
When new or fixed IT systems are ready, rCloud can then synchronise all application data that has changed while running in virtual recovery mode back to the local systems. “One of the unique aspects of rCloud is that an SMB or in most cases the contracted systems integrator can test this process to ensure that it all works as planned,” Webster adds.
rCloud is hosted in a new Tier 1 data centre facility at Interxion in London to provide a localised recovery option to meet privacy, compliance and legal jurisdiction concerns that end users may express.