Data Security and Compliance Consulting

ProSight Data Protection Services - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Machine Backup
ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is a managed service designed to provide small and middle-size businesses a robust and low-cost solution for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based virtual machines (VMs). Altaro VM Backup can be deployed local, offsite, multi-location, and cloud based network models and also supports budget-friendly cloud backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage account.

Key capabilities of ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup include advanced Augmented Inline Deduplication to cut storage requirements, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing as low as five minutes for reducing your vulnerability to data loss, enterprise-class data encryption, granular restore options for entire VMs or for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware vCenter and vSphere, and support for Volume Shadow Copy Service to protect running VMs with no disruption.

Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and can provide a wide assortment of services to assist your business to design, deploy, validate and troubleshoot a data protection solution built on Altaro's VM Backup technology. Progent also has developed ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) Altaro VM Backup as a subscription service to provide remote monitoring and management of your data protection solution. Progent's Windows Hyper-V consultants and VMware integration experts can help you to plan and maintain VM deployments that use local or remote VMs or that run in a hybrid network that combines on-prem and cloud-based resources. Also, Progent offers business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) planning consulting to help you to rebound from catastrophes such as ransomware assaults and natural disasters.

Key Capabilities of Altaro VM Backup
Altaro VM Backup is built to handle the data protection needs of typical small and medium-size organizations and offers ease of operation plus a comprehensive range of capabilities usually available exclusively in enterprise-class platforms. Altaro VM Backup backs up widely used versions of Hyper-V and VMware vCenter and supports most backup media:

Altaro VM Backup comes with powerful features in critical facets of backup such as replication, prompt recovery, and centralized management.

Replication
Altaro VM Backup delivers fast, economical, and secure backup for data protection plus offsite data replication for reliable recovery. Top backup and replication capabilities include:

• Ransomware Protection leveraging Immutable Cloud Storage: Immutable backup for cloud storage allows tamper-proof data for a set duration so that backup data cannot be modified or deleted by any user including administrators. This provides another level of protection and restoration ability in case of a ransomware breach.
• Global Augmented In-Line Deduplication: Altaro's in-line variable block size deduplication sends only changed data to backup storage devices, conserving bandwidth, minimizing storage demands, and improving performance. Altaro's deduplication applies to data on single VMs and across multiple VMs globally.
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP): Instead of scheduling one-a-day backups, you can schedule backup spacing to as short as five minutes to minimize your Recovery Point Objective.
• Concurrency: You can back up multiple VMs concurrently, which makes it possible to conduct backup processes within briefer off-hour time windows while the most bandwidth is available and network performance is less urgent.
• Hot Backup: Integration with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) allows you to back up virtual machines without requiring downtime.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to back up VMs within a Windows Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without Cluster Shared Volumes) or within a VMware vCenter environment supports larger implementations.
• Remote Replication: To assist with business recovery, you can set up the Altaro Offsite Server tool on an external server for keeping a copy of your backups at a remote location.
• Flexible Scheduling and Retention Policies: You can set different backup schedules and retention policies for individual VMs.
  
  Scheduling and retention policies for Altaro are simple to configure, check and edit

• Workload Consistent Backups: Altaro can utilize Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and any VSS Writers running inside the protected VM when executing a backup. Applications including Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL will sense the backup has happened and automatically proceed with the relevant maintenance tasks like truncating VLFs.
• Military-Class Encryption: Before copying your data to a backup destination, you have the ability to encrypt it with the AES-256 encryption standard.
• Virtual Disk Exclusion: You have the ability to select which Virtual Disks to include or exclude in your virtual machine backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving: Besides your on-going and scheduled backups, you can implement an additional schedule to make and archive a new backup copy each week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Azure: Altaro VM Backup enables backup to an Azure Block Blob account, which is the lowest priced storage alternative available on the Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup permits you to protect VMs hosted on-premises, offsite or in a public cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup VM Backup allows seamless backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi. No additional resources running in the cloud are necessary to support backup storage.
• Back up to multiple offsite locations: For better robustness, you can create copies of virtual machines on multiple off-premises locations including multiple clouds such as Azure and Amazon S3.

• Recover as Clone: You can recover a VM backup to a new destination with a new name, allowing the cloned VM to run beside the original virtual machine. This avoids the need to overwrite active VMs.
• Restore to Different Host: You can recover a virtual machine backup to a new or different host. The VM can be restored from the on-prem backup location, or directly from the remote copy location. (You cannot cross-recover between Windows Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisors.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine version from the backup device either for testing or to achieve a major reduction in Recovery Time Objective (RTO) during a disaster recovery event.
• File-Level Restore: You can rapidly recover individual files from any virtual machine copy.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can create continuous backups of your VMs to a remote site and transfer instantly to the copy site in the event that a calamity disables your primary VMs. This can dramatically improve your RTO and put your organization back in business quickly.
• Exchange Item-Level Restore: You can restore individual emails and attachments from the Exchange Mailbox database.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup permits you to restore individual emails from an Exchange Mailbox

• Restore Various Versions: You can recover from different periods rather than being restricted to the last copy.
• Sandbox Restores and Verification: You can program or run manually validation tests to confirm the accuracy of your backup. You can validate backup folders without connecting the VM to your Hyper-V or VMware Hypervisor, or you can execute a complete test recovery to a replicant and ensure that the restored VM can boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup storage integrity can be checked proactively and fixed automatically as part of the next backup process.

Download ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet
To view a datasheet about the key capabilities of ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services, click:
Progent's ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet. (PDF - 310 KB)

How Progent Can Assist You to Benefit from Altaro VM Backup
Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server Hyper-V planning and deployment experts and VMware-certified vCenter consultants can assist your organization to design, implement and manage a backup/recover system based on Altaro VM Backup. Progent's Exchange consultants can assist you to use Altaro VM Backup to protect your Exchange system, and Progent's Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud consulting experts can assist you to use your Azure Block Blob storage service with Altaro to back up your VMs.

Progent's business continuity preparedness consultants can help your business to use Altaro's replication features and remote backup capability to protect your mission-critical data and allow you to resume your vital operations rapidly in the event of a calamity.

Ongoing verification, testing, and enhancement of data restoration are critical and frequently overlooked components for successful disaster preparedness. In case of a disaster such as a ransomware attack, these recovery drills can make the difference between an inconvenient period of downtime and a life-or-death threat to a business. Progent can assist you to create a program for periodically verifying, testing, and enhancing your recovery procedures so you can keep your backup solution current and minimize the impact of a catastrophic event.

Progent's GIAC-certified information assurance (IA) specialists can evaluate the cybersecurity posture of your backup system and can help your business to implement advanced technology and adhere to industry best practices for operating safely in the current threat landscape.