The Challenge

The main challenge for a messaging administrator is to ensure business continuity by keeping a free flow of information through Microsoft Exchange, the leader of e-mail hosting today. Anything that threatens information flow gives rise to unplanned downtime and potential data loss. Whatever the cause, when an Exchange Server and the information it contains is not available, every minute of downtime results in lost revenue, lost opportunities, and even customer loyalty.

The situation additionally aggravates with the fact that IT staff is caught in the middle of conflicting demands regarding data protection. On the one hand they are pressured to provide high flexibility, minimal data loss, and fast recovery. On the other - they need to handle it with lower budgets.

A New Solution from Paragon

Paragon Software has met this vital need by developing a unique technology that offers a simple, yet very efficient way of protecting Exchange 2007/2010 mail databases. Our technology represents significant improvements over traditional backup, replication, and snapshot systems:

• It doesn't require additional infrastructure (no need for a special server, or slow unreliable tapes to store backups)
• It allows NCDP (Near Continious Data Protection), closely approaching zero data loss expectations
• It archives directly to a convenient open format - VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
• It enables SIOS (Single Instance Object Storage) for data de-duplication to minimize load on backup storage
• It supports a Backup Retention Policy to automaticaly eliminate obsolete backups, while keeping several recovery points available
• And many more...

With this technology a messaging administrator can recover an Exchange database just prior to the failure event with minimal effort. It’s ideal for companies that need 24x7 email access to communicate with employees, customers, and partners.

What makes our technology work is a command-line utility called Paragon Exchange Protection (PEP). Here’s how it works:

Why Paragon Exchange Protection?

• Live protection of MS Exchange. There’s no need to allocate a time for backup windows, Exchange Protection creates consistent database backups without any impact on the email server.
• Log shipping for NCDP (Near Continuous Data Protection). Exchange Protection includes a special service that can monitor transaction logs for particular Exchange storage objects to automatically archive them as soon as they are released, providing minimal data loss in case of emergency. Moreover during this type of backup, logs are not truncated, so no impact is made to the performance of the Exchange Server.
• Single instance block backup. Even while creating a full backup, Exchange Protection analyzes and transfers only blocks of data which have been changed since the last backup, providing  server load optimization and backup storage minimization.
• VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) output format. Exchange Protection archives directly to a convenient open VHD format.
• Support for incremental backup chains and block-level data de-duplication. Incremental backups allow additional flexibility by having different time-stamps, while block-level delta for full backups contributes to minimization of backup storage requirements.
• Selective backup. Exchange Protection can protect either selected storage groups, or all groups at once.
• Wide restore options. Exchange Protection restores separate data stores, or storage groups, or all groups at once either to the original or alternative location (a different Exchange Server, a new storage group or any physical disk).
• Data aging monitor. Automatic elimination of obsolete backups not only saves space, but it also cuts back on the time required to perform backups.
• Automated recovery from a broken incremental chain. When MS Exchange refuses to allow the creation  of an incremental backup, Exchange Protection automatically initiates a full backup.
• Support of MS Exchange replicas and cluster configurations.

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