Advantages of Real-time Recovery vs. Instant Recovery

The introduction of instant recovery was a significant leap forward in data recovery. Without having to go to the expense of a real-time replication solution, instant recovery offers quicker restoration times than traditional backup restoration methods. However, as organizations’ dependence on data availability has grown, the limitations of instant recovery have become more apparent.

As discussed in “An Instant Recovery Upgrade, Real-time recovery represents the next evolution in data recovery. It offers real-time restoration capabilities, significantly reducing recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). This report delves into the comparative advantages of real-time restoration over instant recovery.

What is a Recovery Point Objective?

A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the amount of data loss the organization is willing to sustain. The more frequently you protect data, the tighter your RPO window becomes. Everyone would like zero data loss, but the reality is that getting to zero is very expensive and, to some extent, has problems of its own. In backup terms, most organizations still only back up once per day, so as a result, they indicate a 24-hour RPO. The goal of snapshot-driven backups is to lower that RPO to a more reasonable number of hours.

What is a Recovery Time Objective?

A Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the time it takes to return the infrastructure to a state where users can log in and resume work. It is impacted by how the data is stored (tape, disk, flash) and how the software positions it for use. Legacy backup software must restore the data over the network to a server for operations to resume. Instant Recovery aids in creating a tighter RTO since the virtual machine and its application can start on the backup appliance. However, if, as part of the failure, data is corrupted via an application crash, like in a database, the time to reindex and repair that database must be factored into the overall RTO.

This article introduces a new method known as Real-Time Recovery, exemplified by VergeIO’s ioGuardian. This method promises to raise the bar for affordable, rapid recovery.

The Limitations of Instant Recovery

Instant recovery solutions, the former go-to for rapid recovery using backups, allow virtual machines (VMs) to be re-instantiated on a backup appliance. While this reduces downtime compared to traditional methods, it often involves a trade-off in performance and requires manual IT intervention. Moreover, the recovery point objective with instant recovery can still range from four to eight hours, with the potential for significant data loss. Additionally, instant recovery does not automatically restore data to new drives, requiring manual and time-consuming restoration efforts. More importantly, using backups to recover from a catastrophic storage failure like multiple simultaneous drive failures or entire storage system failure is no longer a best practice.

Introducing Real-time Recovery

Real-time Recovery introduces an inline recovery approach that addresses the shortcomings of instant recovery. Integrating the hypervisor directly provides continuous data access, even in the face of multiple drive or node failures. This is achieved through the real-time delivery of missing data segments to VMs from the backup appliance to the production servers. It ensures operations continue seamlessly without downtime. The key advantages of Real-time Recovery include:

Reduced RPO and RTO

Real-time Recovery’s use of snapshots allows for more frequent data protection events, significantly tightening RPO and RTO. By enabling snapshots to be taken frequently based on data change rates and available resources, Real-time Recovery ensures that data recovery can be as recent as the last snapshot, reducing the potential for data loss.

Simplified Recovery Process

Unlike instant recovery, which requires VMs to restart on a backup appliance with potential performance degradation, Real-time Recovery delivers data inline to VMs on the primary instance. This inline capability maintains performance and eliminates the need for IT intervention during the recovery process. Additionally, Real-time Recovery automatically rebuilds data on new drives, further simplifying the restoration process.

Cost-Effective and Efficient

In the VergeIO use case, their integration of ioGuardian into VergeOS eliminates the need for additional charges beyond an additional server license. Furthermore, the global inline deduplication provided by running VergeOS optimizes storage capacity requirements. Data is not rehydrated on transfer, and unique data is stored on the ioGuardian appliance, making real-time restoration cost-effective and efficient.

Enhanced Data Availability

By configuring an additional server as the ioGuardian target, organizations can ensure a third copy of data is always available beyond the built-in protections of the production VergeOS instance. This enhances data availability and provides a robust solution against multiple hardware failures. It also enables long-term data retention without interfering with production data copies.

Conclusion

The evolution from instant recovery to real-time restoration marks a significant advancement in data recovery technologies. By offering reduced RPO and RTO, they simplify the recovery process and ensure cost-effective and efficient data restoration; solutions like ioGuardian set a new standard in ensuring operational continuity and resilience. As businesses prioritize data availability, adopting real-time restoration solutions will be crucial in mitigating the impact of data loss and hardware failures.