In our information-driven economy, it could be said that the value of the data stored in a company's storage servers or corporate data center is greater than the value of the storage servers on which they reside.

Often, however, this fact is not realized until after a disaster such as a power outage, tornado, flood, or fire strikes… and an organization experiences first hand how the loss of data is even more catastrophic than the material loss of goods. In many industries, in fact, the loss of data on a large scale could signal the end of a company in its present form.

The best response to this vulnerability is to accept responsibility for the need to protect data and take the needed steps to protect it.

With this in mind, it is imperative to create a system for copying valuable data and backing it up, with the added step moving it to an offsite repository when needed, to guard against the original data's loss or corruption.

This process, known as Data Replication, can take many forms and is a very effective safeguard. However, to understand the full value of replication to a business, it is necessary to first understand the process of leveraging replication as a means of business continuity.

In general, two major modes of replication exist: synchronous and asynchronous replication, with multiple flavors of each between them - including Snapshot Assisted Replication (SAR) and Journal Assisted Replication (JAR), both featured in StorTrends iTX Data Storage Software.

Each bring to the table with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the ideal solution lies in combining them or selectively utilizing the right method at the appropriate time to leverage the cost and performance benefits of both.

This process, known as Data Replication, can take many forms and is a very effective safeguard. However, to understand the full value of replication to a business, it is necessary to first understand the process of leveraging replication as a means of business continuity.

In general, two major modes of replication exist: synchronous and asynchronous replication, with multiple flavors of each between them - including Snapshot Assisted Replication (SAR) and Journal Assisted Replication (JAR), both featured in StorTrends iTX Data Storage Software.

Each bring to the table with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the ideal solution lies in combining them or selectively utilizing the right method at the appropriate time to leverage the cost and performance benefits of both.

A typical data replication deployment consists of both a primary local server, which acts as the primary data repository and fields reads and writes from clients, and a secondary server, either local or remote, which acts as a backup repository for all of the information stored in the primary.

The link between the primary and secondary servers is established in various ways, depending on distance and permissible cost. Links between the primary and secondary could be over a dedicated network link, an optical connection, or a shared corporate network, for example.

For applications that are not mission-critical, Asynchronous Replication can be an excellent choice.

Asynchronous replication bundles I/Os within snapshots and sends them to the remote server, boosting network utilization efficiency and reducing bandwidth cost. Unlike synchronous replication, in asynchronous replication, I/Os are not sent from the primary to the secondary server in line with their arrival from client servers. Instead, they are buffered at the primary for a brief interval before being sent to the secondary.

The Benefits of Asynchronous Replication

This buffering of replicated data that takes place in asynchronous replication improves bandwidth utilization and yields lower costs. Since buffered data can be compressed or otherwise optimized for size, the asynchronous replication link can be significantly slower than that for a synchronous replication and still do an excellent job of protecting valuable data. Asynchronous replication also increases I/O performance on the primary, because latency is substantially reduced.

Finally, when combined with the revolutionary WDS (WAN-Optimization Data Services) that is part of the Asynchronous Replication module of StorTrends iTX, the storage appliance can take advantage of data deduplication, data compression and link optimization to reduce data transmission and bandwidth usage by several factors over conventional replication speed, for even greater savings and performance.

Want to Learn More?

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