Network Outsourcing for Medium-size Businesses

ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Server Backup
ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is a managed subscription service intended to provide small and middle-size organizations a reliable and affordable option for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be used with local, offsite, multi-location, and hybrid cloud network models and also offers budget-friendly cloud backup to a Microsoft Azure Blob storage account.

Top features of ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup are industry-leading Augmented Inline Deduplication to cut storage size, Continuous Data Protection with backup spacing as low as five minutes for reducing your vulnerability to data loss, military-grade encryption, granular restore options for whole VMs or for individual files and emails, full integration with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware, and support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to back up live VMs with no downtime.

Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a wide range of services to help you to design, deploy, test and troubleshoot a data protection solution built on Altaro's VM Backup platform. 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 system. Progent's Hyper-V consultants and VMware vCenter and vSphere specialists can assist your organization to plan and maintain virtual machine deployments that utilize local or remote virtual machines or that work in a hybrid architecture that combines local and cloud-based resources. Also, Progent offers business continuity preparedness consulting to help businesses to rebound from catastrophes such as ransomware attacks and widespread disasters.

Key Capabilities of Altaro VM Backup
Altaro VM Backup is built to address the backup/recover needs of most small and midsize organizations and offers simplicity of management as well as a comprehensive set of features usually available exclusively in enterprise-class products. Altaro backs up popular versions of Windows Hyper-V and VMware and supports most backup media:

Altaro VM Backup offers advanced capabilities in critical areas of backup includung backup replication, prompt recovery, and centralized management.

Replication
Altaro VM Backup delivers fast, economical, and safe backup for data protection and archiving plus remote replication for reliable restoration. Major backup and replication capabilities include:

• Ransomware Protection via Immutable Cloud Storage: Immutability 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 adds another level of protection and recoverability in the event of a successful ransomware attack.
• Augmented In-Line Deduplication: Altaro's in-line variable block size deduplication sends only changed data to backup devices, reducing network traffic, cutting backup storage demands, and improving throughput. Altaro's deduplication applies to data on lone virtual machines and on multiple virtual machines.
• Continuous Data Protection: Rather than running one-a-day backups, you can schedule backup intervals to as short as five minutes to lower your RPO.
• Concurrency: You can back up many VMs concurrently, which makes it possible to carry out backup processes during shorter low-activity time windows when the most network bandwidth is available and workload throughput is less critical.
• Live/Hot Backup: Integration with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) permits you to back up virtual machines without going offline.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to protect VMs within a Windows Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without Cluster Shared Volumes) or in a vCenter environment supports larger deployments.
• Offsite Replication: To facilitate business recovery, you can set up the Altaro Offsite Server tool on an external server for storing 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 options for Altaro are simple to set up, review and revise

• Workload Specific Backups: Altaro VM Backup can use Volume Shadow Copy Service and any VSS Writers working within the target virtual machine when executing a backup. Applications such as Exchange and Microsoft SQL will sense the backup has taken place and automatically proceed with the appropriate maintenance procedures like truncating VLFs.
• Military-Grade Encryption: Prior to saving data to a backup device, you have the option of encrypting it with the AES-256 encryption standard.
• Virtual Disk Exclude: You have the ability to specify which Virtual Disks to include or ignore in your virtual machine backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving: Besides your on-going and scheduled backups, you can implement a special backup schedule to create and archive a new backup version each week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Azure: Altaro enables backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob account, which is the lowest priced storage option offered on the Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro VM Backup allows you to protect virtual machines hosted on-premises, remotely or in a public cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup supports native backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi. No extra resources running in the cloud are needed to provide storage for backup.
• Back up to multiple remote datacenters: For better robustness, you can create copies of VMs on multiple remote locations including multiple public clouds such as Azure and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

• Recover as Clone: You can recover a virtual machine backup to a new location with a new name, allowing the cloned VM to run beside the original VM. This avoids the need to overwrite live virtual machines.
• Restore to Different Host: You can restore a VM backup to a different host. The VM can be restored from the local backup location, or directly from the remote copy location. (You cannot cross-recover between Windows Hyper-V and VMware.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine copy directly from the backup location for testing purposes or to create a significant reduction in Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in a disaster recovery scenario.
• File-Level Restore: You can rapidly recover specific files from any virtual machine backup.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can create continuous backups of your VMs to a different location and switch immediately to the backup location in case a calamity takes out your main VMs. This can significantly shrink your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and put your organization back online fast.
• Exchange Item-Level Restore: You can retrieve individual emails and attachments from within the Exchange Mailbox database.
  
  Altaro VM Backup allows you to restore specific emails from an Exchange Mailbox database

• Recover Different Versions: You can restore from different periods instead of being restricted to the latest backup copy.
• Sandbox Restores and Testing: This feature lets you schedule or run manually tests to confirm the accuracy of your backup data. You can validate backup folders without connecting the VM to your Hyper-V or VMware Hypervisor, or you can run a full test restore to a clone and ensure that the recovered virtual machine is able to boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup copy accuracy can be monitored on demand and fixed automatically as a component of the subsequent backup process.

Download ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet
To view a datasheet describing the major 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 Server Hyper-V planning and deployment experts and VMware-certified vSphere and vCenter specialists can help you to design, deploy and manage a backup/recover system based on Altaro VM Backup software. Progent's Exchange consultants can assist you to use Altaro VM Backup to safeguard 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 business continuity preparedness consultants can assist your company to use Altaro VM Backup's replication tools and remote backup capability to protect your critical data and allow you to resume your vital services quickly in the event of a calamity.

Ongoing verification, testing, and optimization of system recovery are crucial and often underappreciated requirements for proper disaster preparedness. In case of a disaster such as a ransomware breach, these recovery drills can spell the difference between a temporary period of downtime and an existential crisis to a business. Progent's Altaro VM Backup experts can help you to create a program for periodically verifying, testing, and optimizing your recovery procedures in order that you can keep your backup solution up to date and contain the damage of a disastrous event.

Progent's GIAC-certified information assurance (IA) specialists can gauge the security profile of your data protection system and can assist you to implement the latest technology and follow industry leading practices for working securely in today's threat environment.