Computer Network Help for Mid-size Businesses

ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS) - Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup
Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Machine Backup
ProSight Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup is a managed subscription service intended to provide small and mid-size organizations a reliable and low-cost option for backing up and recovering Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be used with local, remote, multi-site, and hybrid cloud network models and also supports budget-friendly backup to an Azure Block Blob storage account.

Top features of ProSight Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup include industry-leading Augmented Inline Deduplication to cut storage requirements, Continuous Data Protection with backup intervals down to five minutes for reducing your window for data loss, enterprise-class data encryption, granular restore options for whole virtual machines or for individual files and emails, full integration with Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and VMware vCenter and vSphere, and support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to protect running VMs without disruption.

Progent is a certified Hornetsecurity Altaro partner and offers a broad range of services to assist you to plan, implement, test and debug a backup system based on Altaro's VM Backup technology. Progent also has developed ProSight Data Protection Services Altaro VM Backup as a managed service to provide remote monitoring and management of your backup solution. Progent's Hyper-V experts and VMware specialists can help you to plan and manage VM environments that use local or remote virtual machines or that work in a hybrid network that incorporates both on-prem and cloud-based resources. Also, Progent can provide workplace recovery planning expertise to help businesses to rebound from calamities such as ransomware assaults and widespread disasters.

Key Features of Altaro VM Backup
Altaro VM Backup is designed to fulfill the backup/recover needs of typical small and medium-size businesses and provides simplicity of operation plus a comprehensive range of capabilities typically available only in enterprise-grade platforms. Altaro VM Backup backs up popular releases of Hyper-V and VMware vCenter and works with most backup media:

Altaro VM Backup comes with advanced features in vital facets of data protection includung replication, fast recovery, and centralized management.

Replication
Altaro VM Backup delivers rapid, efficient, and safe 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 storage enables tamper-proof data for a set duration so that backup data cannot be erased or modified by any user including administrators. Immutable storage adds an extra level of protection and recoverability in case of a ransomware breach.
• Global Augmented In-Line Deduplication: In-line variable block size deduplication sends only altered data to backup devices or sites, reducing network traffic, minimizing backup storage demands, and enhancing throughput. Deduplication applies to data on lone virtual machines as well as on multiple virtual machines.
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP): Rather than performing one-a-day backups, you can schedule backup intervals to as short as five minutes to minimize your RPO.
• Concurrency: You can back up many VMs concurrently, allowing you to carry out backup processes during briefer low-activity time windows while more network bandwidth is open and workload performance is less critical.
• Live Backup: Integration with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service permits you to back up virtual machines without requiring downtime.
• Cluster Shared Volumes and VMware vCenter: The ability to protect VMs running in a Hyper-V Failover Cluster (with or without CSV) or within a vCenter environment supports larger deployments.
• Offsite Replication: To assist with disaster recovery, you can set up the Altaro Offsite Server utility on an external server for storing a copy of your backups at a different location.
• Flexible Scheduling and Retention Policies: You can set different backup schedules and retention policies for individual VMs.
  
  Backup scheduling and retention options for Altaro are easy to set up, review and edit

• Workload Consistent Protection: Altaro VM Backup can utilize Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and all VSS Writers working inside the target VM when executing a backup. Applications including Exchange and Microsoft SQL will sense the backup has taken place and automatically run the relevant maintenance tasks such as truncating virtual log files.
• Military-Grade Encryption: Prior to copying your 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 VM backups.
• Grandfather-Father-Son Archiving: On top of your continuous and scheduled backups, you can implement an additional schedule to create and archive a new backup version every week, month and year.
• Cloud Backup to Microsoft Azure: Altaro enables backup to a Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage account, which is the most affordable storage alternative available on the Azure cloud.
  
  Altaro Virtual Machine Backup allows you to back up virtual machines hosted on-premises, remotely or in a public cloud

• Cloud Backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi: Altaro VM Backup supports seamless backup to Amazon S3 and Wasabi. No extra resources operating in the cloud are needed to provide storage for backup.
• Back up to multiple remote locations: For improved robustness, you can make copies of virtual machines on multiple remote locations including multiple public clouds like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

• Restore as Clone: You can restore a VM backup to a new destination with a new name, permitting the cloned virtual machine to operate side by side with the original VM. This eliminates the necessity to overwrite live virtual machines.
• Restore to Different Host: You can restore a virtual machine backup to a new or 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 Hypervisors.)
• Boot from Backup: You can instantly boot any virtual machine copy from the backup device for testing or to achieve a major reduction in RTO during a disaster recovery event.
• File-Level Restore: You can rapidly restore specific files and folders from any virtual machine copy.
• WAN-Optimized Replication: You can create continuous copies of your virtual machines to an off-premises site and transfer immediately to the copy location in the event that a disaster disables your primary virtual machines. This can significantly shrink your Recovery Time Objective and put you back online fast.
• Exchange Item-Level Recovery: You can retrieve individual emails and attachments from the Exchange Mailbox.
  
  Altaro VM Backup allows you to recover individual emails from an Exchange Mailbox database

• Restore Various Backup Versions: You can recover from different points in time rather than being restricted to the latest backup copy.
• Sandbox Restores and Testing: You can program or launch manually test drills to assess the integrity 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 full test restore to a clone and ensure that the recovered virtual machine is able to boot.
• Backup Health Monitor: Backup copy accuracy can be monitored proactively and repaired automatically as part of the next backup operation.

Download ProSight Altaro VM Backup Services Datasheet
To view 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 You to Get the Most from Altaro VM Backup
Progent's Microsoft-certified Windows Server Server Hyper-V planning and deployment experts and VMware-certified vSphere and vCenter consultants can help you to design, implement and manage a backup/recover solution built on Altaro VM Backup software. Progent's Exchange experts can help you to use Altaro VM Backup to protect your Exchange environment, and Progent's Microsoft Azure hybrid cloud integration experts can help your company to use your Azure Block Blob storage with Altaro software to back up your virtual machines.

Progent's business continuity preparedness consultants can assist your company to use Altaro's replication tools and offsite backup capability to safeguard your critical data and allow you to restart your vital services rapidly in case of a catastrophe.

Regular validation, testing, and enhancement of data recovery are vital and often underappreciated requirements for successful disaster readiness. In the event of a disaster such as a ransomware breach, these recovery drills can make the difference between a temporary period of downtime and an existential threat to a business. Progent's Altaro VM Backup experts can help you to design a workflow for regularly verifying, testing, and improving your recovery procedures so you can keep your backup strategy up to date and contain the damage of a disastrous event.

Progent's GIAC information assurance consultants can assess the security posture of your data protection solution and can help your company to deploy the latest tools and adhere to industry best practices for operating securely in today's threat landscape.