KBX4000 Protects Data Across Sites

The Kashya KBX4000 sends data over the WAN using a couple of different technologies, including snapshots and asynchronous mirroring.

Kashya uses a rapid snapshot technology to capture transactions and send them over the wire. The advantage of doing it this way instead of just streaming out transactions is that the snapshots provide point-in-time restoration. In the event of a data corruption incident, the secondary site can be rolled back to a point before the corruption.

Before putting data on the wire, the Kashya KBX4000 uses compression and analyzes data to make sure that only data deltas are sent over the wire; this keeps bandwidth usage in check and allows IT managers to set up mirrors on smaller WAN pipes.

The Kashya KBX4000 management interface allows IT managers to set and enforce data protection policies. For example, we could set the limit on the amount of data queued up to go over the WAN.

This is extremely useful because it allows users to fine-tune policies to suit their applications. For example, a point-of-sale application server (where transactions are critical to business) can be forced to send data over the WAN immediately, while a less critical application such as e-mail can be made to wait a little longer before sending data.

The bandwidth optimization can be set according to a couple of different metrics, including number of transactions and the amount of data that needs to be sent.

Using SCSI commands, the Kashya KBX4000 can tell servers to slow their transactions to ensure that data crosses over the WAN before more transactions are processed. Although this is useful, we recommend that IT managers test it thoroughly before implementing it because the artificial latency introduced may not work well with some applications.

Bidirectional data transfer is not a problem for the Kashya KBX4000; if an IT manager has two active sites, mirrors can be sent to both sites. (For example, site A sends data to site B, while B sends data to A.)

Kashya officials highly recommend running redundant appliances at each site.

A configuration with four appliances (two on each side) and software will cost about $30,000 to protect 250GB of data. The appliance can scale to handle as much as 10 terabytes of data, but organizations will need to expand their licenses to handle larger loads. ´

Senior Analyst Henry Baltazar can be contacted at henry_baltazar@ziffdavis.com.