—-> By Kelly Baig
The most common questions that come up when selecting cloud-based recovery services, are all about the network. Common questions include:
Network questions like these often slow the process of modernizing data protection. Providing specific and precise answers to these questions is also difficult, as many variables affect network requirements. As a result, the common answer offered is “it depends.”
Getting Past “It Depends”
SunGard Availability Services offers a better answer than “it depends,” as part of its Recover2Cloud(sm) for Server Replication service. A patent-pending capability developed by SunGard and provided as part of the service, helps organizations to precisely scope the network bandwidth required to meet their precise Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for their specific application environment.
Called the RPO Analysis Tool, this software uses data collected from the standard Windows Performance Monitor (PERFMON) utility. SunGard analysts work with client organizations to monitor the rate of change of data in the client’s application environment. SunGard recommends analysis of a week’s worth of data. Using this data, the patent-pending RPO Analysis Tool provides a series of detailed and summary reports which aid organizations in making better decisions about how much bandwidth they must have available to lower their risk of losing data. This precision helps organizations to know in advance how much they must spend on network bandwidth to lower their risk — and to make better informed decisions in advance of encountering problems down the road.
Example of a Summary Report from SunGard's Patent-Pending RPO Analysis Tool
Identifying Applications with “Replication-Unfriendly” Profiles
Another benefit of the analysis tool is to reveal applications which generate unexpectedly high rates of change of data. Some applications, such as Microsoft Office applications, may re-write entire files on each use — even when a low amount of actual change has occurred in the file. Database maintenance, which often occurs off-hours, can also increase data change rates.
However, so far the use of this tool has revealed that in most environments protected by SunGard services, network connection speeds of less than 10 Mbps are sufficient to provide 15 min RPO or less 95% of the time.