Computer Help for Mid-size Businesses

ProSight Data Protection Services - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Machine Backup and Restore
ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is a managed service designed to provide small and middle-size organizations a reliable and low-cost solution for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based virtual machines. ProSight DPS Altaro Backup can be deployed on-premises, remote, multi-site, and cloud based environments and also supports budget-friendly cloud backup to a Microsoft Azure Blob storage account.

Top capabilities of ProSight DPS Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup include advanced Augmented Inline Deduplication to reduce storage size, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing down to five minutes for reducing your exposure to data loss, enterprise-class data encryption, granular restore alternatives for whole VMs or for individual files, full support for Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware, and support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to protect running VMs with no downtime.

Progent is an Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a wide assortment of services to help your business to plan, implement, test and debug a backup solution based on Altaro's VM Backup platform. Progent also has developed ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup as a managed service to provide end-to-end monitoring and management of your backup solution. Progent's Windows Hyper-V experts and VMware vCenter and vSphere specialists can help you to plan and maintain VM environments that utilize on-premises or offsite virtual machines or that run in a hybrid architecture that incorporates both local and cloud-based resources. Also, Progent offers business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) preparedness consulting to help you to rebound from catastrophic events such as ransomware assaults and widespread disasters.

Major Capabilities of Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup
Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup is built to handle the backup/restore requirements of typical small and medium-size businesses and provides simplicity of management plus a comprehensive feature set usually found only in enterprise-class products. Altaro VM Backup backs up widely used releases of Windows Hyper-V and VMware and supports most backup hardware:

Altaro VM Backup offers advanced capabilities in crucial areas of backup includung backup replication, prompt recovery, and management and reporting.

Backup and Replication
Altaro VM Backup delivers rapid, efficient, and secure backup for data protection plus remote data replication for dependable restoration. Top backup and replication capabilities include:

• Ransomware Defense leveraging Immutable Cloud Storage: Immutability for cloud object storage enables tamper-proof data while under the defined policy so that backup data cannot be erased or modified by anyone including root users. This provides an extra level of security and restoration ability in case of a successful ransomware attack.
• Augmented In-Line Deduplication: In-line variable block size deduplication saves only altered data to backup storage devices or sites, conserving bandwidth, minimizing storage requirements, and enhancing throughput. Deduplication applies to data on lone virtual machines and on many VMs.
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP): Instead of running one-a-day backups, you can reduce backup intervals to as brief as five minutes to lower your Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
• Concurrency: You can back up many virtual machines at the same time, which makes it possible to conduct backup operations within briefer low-activity time windows when the most network bandwidth is open and workload performance is less urgent.
• Live Backup: Altaro's integration with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) permits you to back up VMs without going offline.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to protect virtual machines running in a Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without Cluster Shared Volumes) or in a VMware vCenter system supports larger implementations.
• Offsite Replication: To facilitate disaster recovery, you can set up the Altaro Offsite Server tool on a remote server for keeping a copy of your backups at a remote site.
• Flexible Scheduling and Retention Policies: You can set different backup schedules and retention policies for individual VMs.
  
  Backup scheduling and retention policies for Altaro VM Backup are simple to set up, review and revise

• Application Specific Backups: Altaro VM Backup can use Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and any VSS Writers running within the target VM when executing a backup. Applications like Exchange and Microsoft SQL will be aware the backup has taken place and automatically proceed with the relevant maintenance procedures such as truncating transaction logs.
• Military-Grade Encryption: Prior to copying data to a backup destination, you have the option of encrypting it using the AES-256 encryption standard.
• Virtual Disk Exclude: You can specify which Virtual Disks to include or exclude in your virtual machine backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving (GFS): Besides your continuous and daily backups, you can set up a special backup schedule to make and archive a new backup copy every week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Azure: Altaro VM Backup allows backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage account, which is the lowest priced storage option available on the Microsoft Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup permits you to back up VMs hosted on-premises, remotely or in the cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup VM Backup allows seamless backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi clouds. No extra resources running in the cloud are necessary to provide storage for backup.
• Back up to multiple offsite locations: For improved resilience, you can create copies of VMs on multiple remote sites including multiple clouds like Azure and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

• Recover as Clone: You can restore a VM backup to a new destination with a new name, allowing the cloned virtual machine to operate alongside the original virtual machine. This avoids the necessity to write over live virtual machines.
• Recover to Different Host: You can restore a virtual machine backup to a different host. The virtual machine can be recovered from the on-prem backup location, or directly from the offsite copy location. (You may not cross-recover between Hyper-V and VMware.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine copy directly from the backup device either for verification purposes or to achieve a significant improvement in RTO in a disaster recovery scenario.
• File-Level Restore: You can rapidly recover individual files from any VM backup.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can make ongoing copies of your virtual machines to a different site and transfer instantly to the copy location in case a calamity disables your main virtual machines. This can significantly shrink your Recovery Time Objective and get you back in business fast.
• Microsoft Exchange Item-Level Recovery: You can recover individual emails from within the Exchange Mailbox.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup enables you to restore specific emails from an Exchange Mailbox

• Recover Different Backup Versions: You can restore from different points in time rather than being limited to the latest backup.
• Sandbox Restores and Testing: You can program or launch by hand validation tests to confirm the accuracy of your backup. You can validate backup folders without connecting the VM to your Windows Hyper-V or VMware host, or you can execute a complete confirmation restore to a clone and ensure that the restored virtual machine is able to boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup copy integrity can be monitored on demand and repaired automatically as a component of the subsequent backup process.

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

How Progent Can Assist You to Benefit from Hornetsecurity/Altaro VM Backup
Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server Hyper-V integration experts and VMware-certified vCenter specialists can assist your organization to design, implement and manage a backup/recover system built on Altaro VM Backup software. Progent's Exchange consultants can assist your business to utilize Altaro VM Backup to safeguard your Exchange system, and Progent's Azure hybrid cloud consulting experts can help you to use your Azure Block Blob storage with Altaro to back up your VMs.

Progent's business continuity planning experts can help your business to use Altaro's replication tools and remote backup options to safeguard your critical data and enable you to resume your vital operations quickly in the event of a calamity.

Periodic validation, testing, and optimization of system recovery are crucial and frequently underappreciated requirements for successful disaster preparedness. In the event of a disaster like a ransomware breach, these recovery drills can spell the difference between a short loss of availability and a life-or-death threat to a business. Progent can assist you to design a program for regularly verifying, testing, and enhancing your recovery procedures so you can keep your backup solution current and contain the impact of a catastrophic incident.

Progent's GIAC-certified information assurance (IA) consultants can evaluate the security posture of your backup solution and can help your business to implement advanced tools and adhere to industry leading practices for working securely in the current threat environment.