Revivio Lightens Up With Data Protection

With the storage niche it plays in recently validated by IBM and EMC , continuous data protection (CDP)
provider Revivio is gearing up for new product releases next week.

The company plans to announce a new configuration to its CPS 1200 data
protection server, the CPS 1200i.

The CPS 1200i is a lighter version of the CPS 1200, which allows companies
to restore data exactly as it existed at any chosen moment in time, and is
meant for departments of large businesses, said Revivio Senior Vice
President Kirby Wadsworth.

Wadsworth said existing customers told Revivio they had other applications
outside the core data center that needed CDP without the redundancy and
higher costs of the 1200.

Thus, the 1200i was born. It has the same code base and functionality but is
instead ported to a non-redundant, rack-mount device. At $50,000 it also
costs roughly a third of the original CPS 1200.

Revivio will also offer a Continuous Protection (CPS) Replication Module,
Wadsworth said.

The module is a rack-mount hardware device whose software lets multiple CPS
1200 systems located in various branches of an enterprise communicate with
each other to save data at the same point in time.

Though they run independent of each other, each machine can use the module
to provide a snapshot, or copy, of the data regardless of where it was
physically stored. This is ideal for disaster scenarios.

For example, if one site goes down, a copy of the data that had been
physically residing at the impacted site is instantly made available at the
backup location located hundreds or thousands of miles away.

“The combination of replication and continuous data protection becomes very
powerful because it allows us to have replication across vast differences
using asynchronous protocols,” Wadsworth said without having a reduction in
the number of recovery points at the remote site.”

Such fine-grained recovery across great distances is why CDP is so immensely
popular. Thanks to tough corporate record retention regulations, companies
fear misplacing, losing or destroying even a single document that may be
subpoenaed for court in litigation.

The new products come at a time when companies are attempting to comply with
disaster recovery requirements in the face of limitations and the high cost
of protecting data over distances.

Larger vendors have been taking notice in the success of smaller firms like
Revivio, XOsoft and Mendocino.

Symantec is expected to launch its Panther CDP product this month. Microsoft
will launch
its System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) software later at Storage
Decisions.

IBM is currently offering
Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files.

EMC is expected
to announce OEM agreements to resell CDP gear from Mendocino, which earlier
this week bagged
$18 million in funding.