Altaro is a fast-growing developer of easy-to-use backup solutions for managed service providers (MSPs), IT resellers and IT departments. And they specialize in backup for virtualized and cloud environments. VMblog recently had the opportunity to speak with the company's tech evangelist, Andy Syrewicze, to learn more about the company and their solutions.
VMblog: Even
though the cloud and SaaS services like Office 365 have brought on a new era of
data resiliency, data protection needs are greater than ever! Why is that?
Andy Syrewicze: It's absolutely true that data resiliency
has gotten better. However with the increase in complexity, and the ever
prevalent presence of Ransomware in the industry we're needing more recovery
operations than ever. Additionally, with new services like Office 365 where
data protection isn't included (to the surprise of some!), businesses are
turning data protection applications for business continuity.
VMblog: So, with
the push to cloud, you would think that the need for physical device protection
would be pretty much gone, but it's still going strong. What are your thoughts
as to why?
Syrewicze: This is a
question that I've long thought about. We've been hearing for 10+ years now
that everything is going to be virtualized, and that hasn't come to pass. I
think the main reason is that many organizations have that ONE physical box
that CAN'T be virtualized for whatever reason (and the reasons are many). Pair
that with service provider organizations that support many SMBs that still run
on a single physical server and I think you have some of the key contributors
to why we still see a need for physical device back. In fact Altaro has
recently put a new Physical server back product into public beta. More information on that can be found here.
VMblog: You
Mentioned Office 365 earlier and how Microsoft isn't protecting customer's data
within O365. What about their archival services? Isn't that a form of backup?
Syrewicze: It's true that Archival services in Office
365 will give you some level of protection. However, that protection only spans
a limited amount of time, Items need to be recovered individually, and a speedy
recovery process isn't always guaranteed.
VMblog: With all
this talk about data protection, many people will inevitably move on to the
disaster recovery discussion. Can you clarify the differences that Altaro sees
between backup and DR?
Syrewicze: This is a question that comes up quite
frequently and it really boils down to how fast do you want to be back up and
running. With backup, in a recovery situation you have to wait for restoration
jobs to complete or utilize a technology like our boot from backup functionality.
Even in the latter case you're still facilitating a restore, it's just less
impactful. Depending on the amount of data to be recovered it could take a
significant amount of time before your organization is back up and running
100%. To some organizations, that's acceptable. For those businesses that need
production systems back to 100% in a short amount of time, that's where DR
comes in. With Altaro VM Backup's Replication and DR capabilities this
basically amounts to having a DR warm site somewhere. The selected VMs are
replicated to that location and in the event of a failure, those VMs can simply
be turned on quickly to pick up production responsibilities. The difference
really comes down to speed of recovery.
VMblog: DR can
be expensive, right? So, what if I'm an SMB, and my resources are limited. What
are my options?
Syrewicze: Again, it comes down how quickly do you
need to recover? Most organizations can tolerate a longer outage than they
think they can. Leadership needs to sit down with IT and determine what that
amount of time is. A lower RTO (Recovery Time Objective) usually results in
lower cost. However, if you are one of those organizations that really MUST be
back up quickly, that's unfortunately the cost of doing business. Hosting all
the DR equipment yourself can be expensive. If you find an Operational
Expenditure model works better for your organization, you may want to look at
using a public cloud platform like Azure as your DR location. We have a
whitepaper that discusses this scenario if you're interested in reading.
VMblog: With all
this talk about backup and DR it's worth pointing out that the space is quite
saturated. What makes Altaro different?
Syrewicze: Our claim to fame here at Altaro has always
been in simplicity and ease of use. We take some of these traditionally
difficult technologies (Like DR) and make them easy to setup and consume.
Additionally we aim to do so without breaking the bank as well, because we
understand that not all organizations have an enterprise IT style budget!
VMblog: As we end, is there anything
else Altaro is working on that you'd like to share?
Syrewicze: Well I've already mentioned the physical
server backup beta, but I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention that
we're also working on Sharepoint Online and OneDrive for Business support for
our Office
365 backup product. Be on the lookout for those in the future if you're
interested!
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