SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had

Cloud backup and archive supplier eSilo has a novel twist on deduplicating backup data at source before sending it to the cloud - rehydrating it at the source as well so restore time from the cloud is cut.

The technology, SiloSphere, is based on customers having "a fault-tolerant mesh of data points (computers/agents) scattered around the enterprise and controlled by distributed Universal Storage Nodes (USN)." This provides a centralised management interface.

So we have a target or source deduplicating backup facility here, like EMC's Avamar, but a backup and archive gateway to the cloud instead of a business' own data centre. It saves on network bandwidth when sending backup data to the cloud.

What the privately-owned eSilo adds is the reverse: when data is restored deduped data is sent back across the network to the restoring site and is rehydrated there, restored to its pre-deduplication state ('reduplicated' as eSilo puts it), saving on network bandwidth again. The company says it can slash recovery times by up to 99 per cent, presumably compared to restoring raw, un-deduplicated data from a cloud backup facility.

It says: "Recovery times are further reduced by utilising SiloSphere’s incremental restore technology, [its] ability to recover the latest data and [recognise] the best data path by comparing local disk and network speeds."

There is another wrinkle eSilo has added as well. It has the somewhat unattractive name of Backive, with SiloSphere keeping a local "online archive enabling online searching of global data sets without first performing a [cloud] recovery operation." That makes thee ways eSilo tries to overcome cloud backup and archive network bandwidth and transmission time limitations.

The company says its product also includes eDiscovery functionality, supporting enterprise-wide legal holds of data.

eSilo's CEO Jerry Jeffries says his company's technology optimises cloud data restore times as well as cloud backup times. The company message is that "backup is merely a means to an end with data recovery being the ultimate objective." Seems logical.

The eSilo product is for managed service providers, and end-user pricing and availability will come from them, as and when they offer services using it. ®

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