Filed under: Webinars | Tagged: backup, CDP, Double-Take Backup, Double-Take Software, provisioning, Recovery, Webinar | Leave a Comment »
Double-Take® Software Enhances Systems Integrator Program to Deliver New Support and Resources
Posted on March 11, 2010 by amcanty
SIs to Benefit from Quick and Easy Migrations with Award-Winning Double-Take® Move
Southborough, Mass. – March 10, 2010 – With so many different types of IT software available on the market, system integrators (SIs) play an important role for end users by bundling critical systems and technologies and packaging those components in a way that makes them easy for end users implement. To accommodate this business dynamic further, Double-Take® Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) is enhancing and expanding its SI Program by offering new support and resources that makes it easier for SIs to integrate Double-Take Software’s disaster recovery and workload optimization products into their solutions.
Overall SI Program Enhancements:
- Double-Take Software is expanding its SI program to provide access to the company’s simple, integrated and cost-effective workload optimization suite of products: Double-Take® Move, Double-Take® Availability, Double-Take® Backup, Double-Take® Cloud, and Double-Take® Flex.
- Double-Take Software’s program enhancements will allow SIs to boost their own offerings to end users with increased support and functionality through these products, which can be easily integrated into SI solutions.
- Double-Take Software provides SI partners with an array of benefits in the enhanced program, including product engineering support, field sales support, technical support, ROI and marketing tools, and a project manager assigned to each organization as a resource for all facets of planning, training, education and certifications.
How Double-Take Move Benefits SIs:
- Businesses that need to perform migrations will be able to seamlessly migrate workloads between any combination of physical and virtual servers using Double-Take Software’s award-winning migration product, Double-Take Move, which allows system integrators to perform end-user migrations with little to no downtime.
- Businesses using Double-Take Move are able to cut migration project durations by 50-75 percent, resulting in accelerated consolidation when virtualizing servers and an increased ROI. Additionally, SIs have seen a more than 75 percent reduction in the number of man hours needed during these types of large migration projects.
Quotes:
Steve Dupree, director global alliances – System Integrators, for Double-Take Software: “Double-Take Software’s goal is to make it easier for SIs and end users to access industry-leading migration, protection, disaster recovery and desktop virtualization solutions. By enhancing our SI program, SIs and end users will now be able to access better solutions, rely on great support and achieve a faster ROI, while reducing the work hours required for maintaining projects.”
Links
- Double-Take Software SI Program: http://bit.ly/9cceNl
- Double-Take Software Product Page: http://bit.ly/9GmM8U
Filed under: Press Releases | Tagged: Double-Take, Double-Take Availability, Double-Take Backup, Double-Take Cloud, Double-Take Flex, Double-Take Move, Double-Take Software, si, sip, systems integator | Leave a Comment »
Double-Take 101 Series: The /AltDNS Switch
Posted on March 9, 2010 by miketalonnyc
Much to the chagrin of Mr. Ballmer in Redmond, not everyone uses the Microsoft Active Directory Integrated DNS (AD DNS) system just yet. While certain applications like Microsoft Exchange Server are designed to work with AD DNS, they can work with other forms of DNS as well. Many other applications are not particular about which DNS systems they use, as long as a standards-based DNS server is available to accept their requests.
Double-Take Availability’s Application Failover module has had the ability to update AD DNS servers as part of an automated failover routine since way back when it was introduced as the DTAM wizard. The issue has always been that while many clients use Application Failover for SQL, File, Exchange, Blackberry and SharePoint servers; many of those do not use AD DNS in their environment.
To help with this, the Application Failover wizard can utilize a command-line switch to keep the wizard from trying to find, verify and update an AD DNS server if none is present in the environment. However, customers don’t always know that the tool exists, or how to use it.
The easiest way to use the AltDNS tool is to create a new shortcut for the Application Manager (you’ll find the icon under Start|Programs|Double-Take) and adding /AltDNS to the end of the command line that shows up in the “Target” field of the shortcut’s properties page. You could also run the executable from the command-line with the /AltDNS switch, but you will then have to remember to do that each time.
You will not see any major differences between running the software with and without the switch right up front. The wizards look about the same, though of course you cannot use the DNS failover components in the Options area of the system. What you will notice is that the wizard will not check for any of the DNS components during the server identification routines, and will not list any warnings dealing with DNS during the validation run.
This doesn’t mean we cannot update other DNS systems, it just means that we do not look for an AD DNS controller to update. If you modify the failover and failback scripts via the Advanced tab in the options pages, you can add in command-line operations to update your DNS controllers. This means you will need to grant our services permission to update those records manually, and you will need to find the right commands to issue and to put in the scripts themselves. If you find you need assistance, our Professional Services team can help with DNS configurations on a per-engagement basis.
The /AltDNS feature set is only available on our Application Manager (formerly DTAM) wizard. FSFO, Hyper-V failover and other wizards can still be configured at the script-level, but will always check for an AD DNS controller and warn you if they cannot find one in the environment.
Thanks to Nick R. for this week’s question!
Filed under: Best Practices, DT 101, Double-Take Availability | Leave a Comment »
Register for our Upcoming Seminar in Ft. Lauderdale!
Posted on March 9, 2010 by amcanty
Filed under: Workload Optimization | Tagged: backup, Disaster Recovery, Double-Take Software, DoubleTake Software, Move, seminar | Leave a Comment »
Part 2: Things are Heating Up: Lennox International Selects Double-Take® Software to Optimize Branch Office Backup
Posted on March 8, 2010 by amcanty
“With Double-Take Backup, Double-Take Software has taken a problem that people have had for years and solved it,” said Duke. “Using it in my IT infrastructure is extremely easy and manageable; I am literally blown away with how well it works. My team simply set it up and walked away, only to come back to find everything had been replicated to our datacenter and then backed up and was working perfectly. This product has saved my IT department significant time and money.”
Unlike a traditional backup scenario where the data sent to disk or tape is, on average, 12 hours old, Double-Take Software’s real-time replication provides a backup that is continuously updated. Double-Take Backup is hardware and application independent and easy for even non-technical staff to install and maintain. This product offers customers the ability to protect the entire system (data, applications and the operating system) and makes it easy to rapidly recover that backup to the same or different hardware, providing true recoverability for critical workloads. It reduces IT staff time and costs, allows customers to configure their server architecture so that they can perform recoveries on-demand to either new physical or virtual servers, with the assurance that everything will go as planned due to the product’s automated validation capabilities.
“The need for data protection and recovery is nothing new. How companies approach this problem, however, has come a long way,” said Dan Jones, Vice President of North American Sales and Marketing at Double-Take Software. “Our relationship with Lennox International accentuates the fact that there are great options for companies of all sizes to have painless, centralized backup solutions that eliminate the reliance on tape and provide quick and easy full server restorations.”
For more information, click here: http://bit.ly/9ksT7R
Filed under: Backup and Recovery, Double-Take Backup | Tagged: backup, Backup and Recovery, Backup Software, Double-Take Backup, Double-Take Software | Leave a Comment »
Double-Take 101 Series: Protecting Domain Controllers
Posted on March 4, 2010 by miketalonnyc
Active Directory Domain Controllers (DC’s) are a staple of Windows networks around the world. DC’s manage access rights, help people and devices find other people and other devices, and even power complex applications like Microsoft Exchange. The good news is that DC’s are multi-master, and so they have the ability to protect each other from a domain data perspective. This means that you can put another DC in another location, assign it to the same Domain as your primary site, and it can take over if the first DC fails. This works great if you want to maintain DC’s in multiple locations and if you have no other applications running on that DC. Since AD replication only protects the domain info, anything else on the box is your own responsibility.
This has led many of our clients to look to Double-Take Software products for protection of their DC’s. Either they don’t want to continually maintain servers in another location, or they have critical applications and data residing on a DC that also require protection. Both Double-Take Availability and Double-Take Backup can safely replicate and fail over and/or recover DC’s, but there are certain things to keep in mind:
Only Full Server Fail Over (FSFO) tools in Double-Take Availability or Full Server Recovery in Double-Take backup can be used to protect DC’s for failover purposes. We can do non-domain data replication only, of course, but failover/recovery of the DC can only be accomplished via our System State Protection tool sets.
FSFO Failback – otherwise known as a Fail Forward Operation – does not work for DC’s. This is mainly because the security principles of a DC are designed to prohibit such operations from working the way they would on any other Windows server. You can still re-install Windows (leaving all the data intact) on a surviving Source server, then set up FSFO in the opposite direction. For help on that, reach out to Technical Support.
If the server you failed over or recovered is the last surviving DC when you had multiple DC’s in production, it will come up in non-authoritative mode. This is a safety catch built into AD that makes sure a “lone wolf” DC doesn’t attempt to overwrite other DC’s with outdated or incorrect information. This is fully reversible, though. Follow the instructions on this TechNet site. Note that if you only had one active DC in your environment, then you will not have to ever run through those steps, this only applies if you had more than one production DC and all have failed.
DC’s often contain data and applications outside of the AD components themselves. When this happens, Double-Take Software Tools can be used to protect and recover the whole server. Just keep in mind that as DC’s are highly specialized and secured platforms, you have to handle them slightly differently with Double-Take Software products to match their needs.
Filed under: Backup and Recovery, DT 101, Double-Take Availability, Double-Take Backup, Workload Availability, workload backup | Leave a Comment »
Part 1: Lennox Leverages Double-Take® Backup to Provide Protection for its Critical Workloads with Continuous Protection and Rapid Recovery
Posted on March 4, 2010 by amcanty
Lennox International (NYSE: LII), a global leader in the heating, air conditioning and refrigeration market, has selected Double-Take® Backup to provide continuous protection and on-demand rapid recovery to address their backup inefficiencies while gaining the ability to protect everything from individual files to entire systems in real-time.
Prior to implementing Double-Take Backup, Lennox IT manager Drew Duke faced the time-consuming task of checking and testing 160 individual servers everyday to ensure that business-critical data was backed up to tape and protected. With a lean team of IT professionals, Double-Take Backup helped Duke centrally backup all branch office data from 160 servers to one target server and allowed him to focus backup efforts in the tech-savvy data center instead of at each branch location. Since implementing the solution, Lennox has seen impressive results, including:
• A data recovery success rate of 100%
• A significant decrease in the time required to replicate backups to a central location and virtually eliminating backup windows,
• A 50 percent reduction in per server backup costs,
• And a 50 percent reduction in helpdesk requests from employees.
To learn more, click here: http://bit.ly/9ksT7R
Filed under: Backup and Recovery, Double-Take Backup | Tagged: backup, Backup Software, backup Solution, Double-Take Backup, Lennox, tape backup | Leave a Comment »
Watch our Latest Video Case Study!
Posted on March 3, 2010 by amcanty
Check out our latest video case study with our partner Cervalis. Cervalis provides reliable infrastructure that enables customers to be certain that their backup data is secure. Learn how Cervalis used Double-Take® Availability and Double-Take® Backup to ensure that their customer’s data is safe and available for them to use should a disaster occur.
For more case studies, click here!
Filed under: Case Studies, Double-Take Availability, Double-Take Backup | Tagged: Cervalis, Double-Take Availability, Double-Take Backup, Double-Take Software | Leave a Comment »
It’s the Recovery Stupid
Posted on February 24, 2010 by brennels
In the early 1990’s the then administration had intense discussions about what was important to economy and the phrase “It’s the Economy Stupid!” came to light and ultimately helped win the election in 1992. I was thinking about this the other day and realized this same phrase applies to server backup and recovery, then realized that it isn’t the backup that is important but more so the ability to recover. IT managers ever day perform backups to protect data, servers, applications in the event the need is to recover those systems but just because there is a duplicate copy never ensures the ability to recover that copy of the server workload in a timely manner. This is where many cloud providers as well as storage vendors may be making the same past mistakes utilizing proprietary solutions only between like hardware or infrastructure.
Just because data may be backed up to tape, disk, a data center or cloud computing infrastructure never guarantees the ability that it can be recovered quickly and efficiently to a new server or virtual machine. In fact, many pains IT managers face is that backups can’t be recovered to dissimilar hardware. If you have a backup of a HP or IBM blade, what are the changes of being able to restore that to a Dell PowerEdge. Probably not good! The challenge is the inoperability of compatible drivers and or hardware and not to mention licensing of recovering that workload to a new or different server that may be available.
Cloud backup and recovery solutions solve much of these issues. Virtualization certainly can add level of complexity to the situation but also greatly helps solve many of these issues. The great thing about being able to backup and recover to a virtual cloud platform as there is no need to care what the server is, just that there is the ability to spin up the virtual machine in the event of a failure and access the workload from the cloud. This is rapidly becoming the 4th dimension of cloud computing platforms, “recovery as a service” in addition to Paas, IaaS, and SaaS.
So just because you have a backup when was the last time there was an attempt to recover? Focusing on improving the speed and efficiency of the recovery process will be better spent than just throwing in another tape to make you feel good. This will also ensure when there is a disaster event there isn’t a scramble to find the latest backup because the recovery procedures have been well exercised and streamlined to bring business operations into production with minimal downtime. Improving recovery will not only let you sleep well at night but will make you a rock star when you can quickly bring workloads online and prove to your executive team everything is under control. So, it isn’t just about the backup it’s the recovery!
Filed under: Backup and Recovery, Business Continuity, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery, Double-Take Cloud, EqualLogic | Tagged: Backup and Recovery, Business Continuity, Cloud Backup and Recovery, Cloud Computing, Disaster Recovery | 2 Comments »
Double-Take 101 Series: What is Double-Take Cloud?
Posted on February 22, 2010 by miketalonnyc
Unless you’ve sequestered yourself under a rock today, you have no doubt heard about our new product offering here at Double-Take Software. Double-Take Cloud is a backup and complete recovery solution that leverages Amazon’s EC2 platform to provide not only someplace to store your information, but also servers to bring your business back.
With traditional Double-Take Backup, you create a Repository Server that will accept incoming connections from your production machines. We use real-time replication to protect the data, binaries, system state information and all other files and settings on the production servers to the Repository. The problem is, many organizations don’t have the hardware or floor space to house the Repository Server, much less Recovery Servers to restore to.
Hosting provider partners are a good idea if you have many servers and want both workload availability and workload backup, but can be a large expense if you just want to host one server as a Repository. So we here at Double-Take Software worked with Amazon Web Services to offer cloud-based Repositories and Recovery Servers via our Double-Take Cloud product.
The process is straight-forward. You place the Double-Take Backup agent software on each production server you want to protect. Then you sign up with EC2 (you can find details on our site at http://www.double-take.com/cloud) and create your Repository server in the Amazon Cloud. Double-Take Software keeps AMI (cloud server images) updated, so there’s no server to build out. Just spawn a Repository from the AMI, create a cloud-based disk, and you’re ready to protect.
Once your Repository is up and running with associated cloud-based disk space, you can set up full-server Double-Take Backup protection from your production servers into your cloud-based repository. As with traditional Double-Take backup, you can protect anything that runs on Windows Server 2003 and up, regardless of what applications are present on those servers. This protection leverages the same real-time (or scheduled/throttled) byte-level replication system and compression as our other Double-Take Software products, so you can maximize the amount of data you can protect over any given bandwidth set.
Most cloud-based backup systems stop there. If you need to get back up and running, you would have to rebuild servers and then restore from the cloud to your site. Double-Take Cloud takes the solution set one step further. The Double-Take Cloud system is designed from the ground up to work with server restoration within the cloud, allowing for more than just simple backup/restore operations.
You can spin up new servers on-demand in the Amazon EC2 platform, then use the Repository to send all information for the failed machine into this new instance. Since the Double-Take Cloud system includes our System-State Recovery tool set, we can convert your new instance into your original production server with all applications, switches and settings intact.
So, Double-Take Cloud offers a total backup, ongoing protection and rapid cloud-based recovery system for any size business. Of course, it is also designed to work with all our other Double-Take Software products, allowing you to extend your Workload Optimization plans both within and beyond your physical architecture.
Want the details and more info? http://www.doubletake.com/cloud
Filed under: DT 101, Double-Take Cloud | Leave a Comment »
