Computer Security and Compliance

ProSight Data Protection Services - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Machine 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-powered virtual machines. Altaro VM Backup can be deployed local, remote, multi-location, and cloud based environments and also offers cost-effective cloud backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage service.

Top features of ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup are advanced Augmented Inline Deduplication to cut backup storage size, Continuous Data Protection with backup intervals as low as five minutes for reducing your window for data loss, enterprise-class encryption, flexible restore alternatives for whole VMs or for specific files, full support for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware vCenter and vSphere, and the ability to leverage Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to back up running virtual machines without downtime.

Progent is an Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a wide assortment of services to help you to plan, implement, test and debug a data protection solution based on Hornetsecurity's VM Backup technology. Progent also offers ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup as a managed service to provide end-to-end monitoring and management of your data protection solution. Progent's certified Hyper-V experts and VMware vCenter and vSphere specialists can help you to design and maintain VM deployments that utilize on-premises or offsite virtual machines or that work in a hybrid architecture that combines on-prem and cloud resources. Also, Progent can provide business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) preparedness expertise to assist businesses to rebound from calamities such as ransomware assaults and natural disasters.

Key Features of Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup
Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup is designed to fulfill the backup/recover needs of most small and midsize organizations and offers simplicity of operation as well as a comprehensive set of features usually available exclusively in enterprise-class products. Altaro VM Backup protects popular versions of Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vCenter and works with standard backup hardware:

Altaro VM Backup offers advanced features in critical areas of backup such as backup replication, fast recovery, and management and reporting.

Backup and Replication
Altaro VM Backup offers fast, economical, and secure backup for data protection and archiving plus offsite data replication for dependable restoration. Major backup and replication features include:

• Ransomware Protection leveraging Immutable Cloud Storage: Immutable backup for cloud object storage enables tamper-proof data for a set duration so that backup data cannot be erased or modified by anyone including administrators. This adds an extra level of security and restoration ability in case of a successful ransomware attack.
• Global Augmented In-Line Deduplication: In-line variable block size deduplication saves only changed data to backup devices or sites, conserving bandwidth, cutting backup storage demands, and improving throughput. Altaro's deduplication works with data on lone virtual machines and on multiple virtual machines globally.
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP): Rather than scheduling one-a-day backups, you can schedule backup spacing to as short as five minutes to lower your Recovery Point Objective.
• Concurrency: You can back up many virtual machines simultaneously, allowing you to conduct backup processes during briefer off-hour time windows when the most bandwidth is available and network performance is less urgent.
• Hot Backup: Altaro's integration with Volume Shadow Copy Service permits you to back up virtual machines without incurring downtime.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to back up VMs within a Windows Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without Cluster Shared Volumes) or within a vCenter environment allows larger implementations.
• Offsite Replication: To facilitate business recovery, you can deploy the Altaro Offsite Server tool on an external server for keeping 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 VM Backup are easy to configure, check and revise

• Workload Specific Protection: Altaro VM Backup can use Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and all VSS Writers working inside the target VM when executing a backup. Apps such as Exchange and Microsoft SQL will sense the backup has happened and automatically proceed with the relevant maintenance tasks like truncating transaction logs.
• Military-Class Encryption: Before copying data to a backup destination, you have the ability to encrypt it using the AES-256 standard.
• Virtual Disk Exclude: You have the ability to select which Virtual Disks to include or ignore in your virtual machine backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving: On top of your on-going and scheduled backups, you can set up an additional schedule to create and archive a backup version each week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Azure: Altaro allows backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage account, which is the least expensive storage alternative offered on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on-site, remotely or in the cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup supports seamless backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi clouds. No additional resources operating in the cloud are required to provide backup storage.
• Back up to multiple offsite datacenters: For better robustness, you can create copies of virtual machines on multiple remote sites including multiple public clouds such as Azure and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

• Restore as Clone: You can restore a virtual machine backup to a new location with a new name, allowing the cloned VM to operate beside the original virtual machine. This avoids the necessity to overwrite active VMs.
• Recover to Different Host: You can recover a VM backup to a new or different host. The VM can be recovered from the local backup location, or directly from the offsite copy location. (You cannot cross-recover between Windows Hyper-V and VMware Hypervisors.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine copy directly from the backup location for testing or to create a significant reduction in Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in a disaster recovery event.
• File-Level Restore: You can quickly recover specific files and folders from any virtual machine backup.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can make ongoing backups of your virtual machines to an off-premises site and switch immediately to the backup site in the event that a disaster disables your main VMs. This can dramatically improve your RTO and get your organization back online fast.
• Microsoft Exchange Item-Level Restore: You can restore specific emails from within the Exchange Mailbox database.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup permits you to recover specific emails from an Exchange Mailbox

• Restore Various Backup Versions: You can recover from different periods instead of being limited to the latest backup.
• Sandbox Restores and Verification: This feature lets you program or run manually tests to confirm the integrity of your backup. You can validate backup folders without connecting the virtual machine to your Hyper-V or VMware Hypervisor, or you can run a complete test recovery to a replicant and ensure that the recovered VM can boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup storage integrity can be checked on demand and fixed automatically as part of the subsequent backup operation.

Download ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet
To see a datasheet about the major features of ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services, click:
Progent's ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet. (PDF - 310 KB)

How Progent Can Assist Your Business to Benefit from Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup
Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server Server Hyper-V planning and deployment consultants and VMware-certified vCenter specialists can help you to plan, deploy and maintain a backup/restore system based on Altaro VM Backup software. Progent's Exchange consultants can help you to utilize Altaro VM Backup to safeguard your Exchange system, and Progent's Azure hybrid cloud integration specialists can help your company to utilize your Azure Block Blob storage service with Altaro to back up your virtual machines.

Progent's disaster recovery planning experts can assist you to use Altaro's replication tools and offsite backup options to safeguard your critical data and allow you to resume your vital services quickly in the event of a catastrophe.

Periodic validation, testing, and enhancement of data restoration are crucial and often overlooked components for proper disaster readiness. In the event of a disaster like a ransomware breach, these restoration drills can spell the difference between an inconvenient period of downtime and a life-or-death crisis to a business. Progent can help you to design a workflow for periodically verifying, testing, and improving your recovery procedures in order that you can keep your backup solution up to date and minimize the impact of a catastrophic event.

Progent's GIAC information assurance (IA) experts can evaluate the cybersecurity posture of your backup system and can help your organization to deploy advanced tools and follow industry best practices for working safely in today's threat landscape.