Michal-KubicekAsigra develops and provides backup and recovery solutions for service providers to deploy and sell. Asigra is essentially a software company, which is specialising in developing software that allows XSPs to provide Backup and Recovery as a service to enterprise customers as well as end customers to build their private clouds to protect their data. The implementation is web-based with no software agents installed on customers’ IT. Asigra’s solution is comprised of two components: the DS-Client and the DS-System.

The DS-Client resides at the customer premises.

  • It collects all structured and unstructured data from Servers, Desktops, and laptops on the LAN
  • Performs data reduction (Local dedupe across the entire LAN and compression) to reduce the amount of data being transmitted offsite.
  • Encrypts the data
  • Sends/backs up the data off-site to the DS-System.

The DS-System is installed at the vaulting location where the protected data resides. This would typically be at service provider’s premises, but could also be deployed within an internal/private cloud at a customer’s own site.

The DS-System performs global de-dupe across all sites.

  • Runs data integrity checks on the data.
  • When the data passes data integrity checks, it is then stored on storage hardware within the data center.
  • Asigra supports most NAS & SAN hardware available.

The Asigra solution is a single code base that provides such features as encryption, CDP, de-duplication, reporting & billing.

The implementation is designed with the business model of a service provider in mind. The SP has to build its own hardware solution, on which the XSP installs the Asigra solution. The XSP is taken through an implementation procedure to ensure that the solution will cater for all critical backup needs and DR design requirements. The XSP solution is designed to ensure that protected data is replicated off-site for DR protection. It is also designed to provide the XSP with the ability to monitor, report and bill backup services.

Customers are supported on a number of OS, databases and hypervisors. Recently the Asigra solution is catering for customer’s mobile IT resources including remote laptops and handheld devices like tablets and smart phones. Asigra also provides a backup-apps for Apple iOS and Google Android. These apps. backup the data directly from the handheld device, protecting the data at the source.

The Asigra solution has been available for over 25 years and has hundreds of SP customers and 400,000 end customer sites protected by the Asigra technology.

Image credit: Michal Kubicek via Unsplash

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *