Computer Security and Compliance

ProSight Data Protection Services - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Machine Backup/Recovery
ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is a managed subscription service intended to offer small and mid-size businesses a robust and low-cost solution for backing up and recovering Hyper-V and VMware-based virtual machines. ProSight DPS Altaro Backup can be deployed on-premises, remote, multi-site, and hybrid cloud network models and also supports budget-friendly backup to a Microsoft Azure Blob storage account.

Top capabilities of ProSight Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup include advanced Augmented Inline Deduplication to reduce backup storage size, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup intervals as low as five minutes for reducing your window for data loss, enterprise-class encryption, flexible recovery alternatives for whole virtual machines or for individual files, extensive integration with Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware vCenter and vSphere, and the ability to leverage Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to protect running virtual machines with no disruption.

Progent is an Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a wide range of services to help your business to plan, implement, test and troubleshoot a backup/restore solution built on Altaro's VM Backup technology. Progent also has developed ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup as a subscription service to deliver end-to-end monitoring and management of your data protection ecosystem. Progent's certified Hyper-V experts and VMware vCenter and vSphere integration experts can help you to design and manage virtual machine deployments that utilize on-premises or offsite VMs or that use a hybrid network that incorporates both on-prem and cloud-based assets. In addition, Progent offers business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) planning expertise to assist you to get ready for calamities such as ransomware attacks and widespread disasters.

Major Capabilities of Altaro VM Backup
Altaro VM Backup is built to handle the backup/restore requirements of most small and midsize businesses and offers simplicity of operation plus a comprehensive range of capabilities typically available exclusively in enterprise-class products. Altaro VM Backup protects widely used releases of Windows Hyper-V and VMware and works with most backup hardware:

Altaro VM Backup comes with advanced capabilities in vital areas of backup includung replication, prompt restoration, and centralized management.

Backup and Replication
Altaro VM Backup delivers rapid, efficient, and safe backup for data protection and archiving plus remote data replication for dependable recovery. Top backup and replication features include:

• Ransomware Protection via Immutable Cloud Storage: Immutable backup for cloud storage enables tamper-proof data while under the defined policy so that backup data cannot be modified or deleted by anyone including root users. Immutable storage provides another level of protection and recoverability in case of a ransomware breach.
• Global Augmented In-Line Deduplication: In-line deduplication saves only altered data to backup devices or sites, conserving bandwidth, cutting backup storage demands, and enhancing performance. Deduplication works with data on single VMs as well as on many virtual machines.
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP): Instead of scheduling daily backups, you can schedule backup intervals to as short as five minutes to lower your Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
• Concurrent Backups: You can back up many VMs at the same time, which makes it possible to conduct backup operations within briefer low-activity time windows while the most network bandwidth is available and workload throughput is less urgent.
• Hot Backup: Integration with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) permits you to back up virtual machines without incurring downtime.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to protect VMs within a Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without Cluster Shared Volumes) or in a VMware vCenter environment allows large-scale deployments.
• Remote Replication: To assist with business recovery, you can set up Altaro's Offsite Server utility on an external server for storing a copy of your backups at a different site.
• Flexible Scheduling and Retention Policies: You can set different backup schedules and retention policies for individual VMs.
  
  Backup scheduling and retention policies for Altaro are simple to configure, check and edit

• Application Specific Protection: Altaro can use Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service and any VSS Writers running within the target VM when making a backup. Apps such as Exchange and Microsoft SQL will be aware the backup has taken place and automatically run the relevant maintenance tasks like truncating VLFs.
• Military-Class Encryption: Before saving your data to a backup destination, you have the ability to encrypt it with the AES-256 encryption standard.
• Virtual Disk Exclude: You have the ability to specify which Virtual Disks to include or exclude in your VM backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving (GFS): Besides your on-going and daily backups, you can set up an additional backup schedule to create and archive a backup version every week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Microsoft Azure: Altaro VM Backup allows backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage account, which is the lowest priced storage alternative offered on the Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro VM Backup permits you to back up VMs hosted on-premises, offsite or in the cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup VM Backup supports seamless backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi clouds. No additional resources operating in the cloud are necessary to support backup storage.
• Back up to multiple remote datacenters: For improved robustness, you can create copies of virtual machines on multiple remote sites including multiple public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon S3.

• Recover as Clone: You can recover a VM backup to a new destination with a new name, permitting the cloned VM to operate beside the original VM. This avoids the need to overwrite live virtual machines.
• Recover to Different Host: You can recover a VM backup to a new or different Hypervisor. The virtual machine can be restored from the local backup location, or directly from the remote copy location. (You may not cross-recover between Windows Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisors.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine copy from the backup location for verification purposes or to achieve a significant improvement in RTO during a disaster recovery scenario.
• File-Level Recovery: You can quickly restore specific files and folders from any VM backup.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can create ongoing copies of your VMs to a different location and switch immediately to the copy location in the event that a calamity disables your main virtual machines. This can significantly shrink your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and get you back online quickly.
• Microsoft Exchange Item-Level Recovery: You can restore specific emails and attachments from the Exchange Mailbox database.
  
  Altaro VM Backup permits you to restore specific emails from an Exchange Mailbox

• Recover Different Versions: You can restore from different periods instead of being restricted to the last backup.
• Sandbox Restores and Testing: This feature lets you schedule or run manually validation tests to confirm the accuracy of your backup. You can validate backup folders without connecting the virtual machine to your Windows Hyper-V or VMware host, or you can execute a complete test restore to a clone and ensure that the restored VM can boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup copy accuracy can be checked on demand and repaired automatically as a component of the subsequent backup process.

Download ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet
To see a datasheet describing the major features of ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services, click:
Progent's ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet. (PDF - 310 KB)

How Progent Can Help Your Business to Get the Most from Altaro VM Backup
Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server Server Hyper-V planning and deployment experts and VMware-certified vCenter consultants can help you to plan, implement and maintain a backup/recover system built on Altaro VM Backup. Progent's Exchange experts can help you to use Altaro VM Backup to protect your Exchange system, and Progent's Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud integration specialists can assist you to utilize your Azure Block Blob storage with Altaro to protect your VMs.

Progent's disaster recovery planning experts can assist your business to use Altaro VM Backup's replication tools and offsite backup options to protect your mission-critical data and enable you to resume your vital services rapidly in case of a calamity.

Periodic verification, testing, and enhancement of data recovery are vital and often overlooked requirements for proper disaster readiness. In the event of a disaster such as a ransomware attack, these recovery drills can spell the difference between a temporary period of downtime and a life-or-death threat to a business. Progent can help you to create a workflow for regularly validating, testing, and enhancing your restore procedures in order that you can keep your backup solution up to date and minimize the impact of a catastrophic event.

Progent's GIAC information assurance experts can gauge the security profile of your data protection solution and can help you to implement the latest technology and follow industry leading practices for operating safely in the current threat landscape.