Double-Take Cargo With Storage Optimization Capabilities

In an effort to help IT administrators manage the rapid growth in unstructured data, Double-Take Software announced the release of Double-Take Cargo, an add-on storage optimization solution that complements continuous replication and failover by archiving inactive files from the production server to the Double-Take target server. The result is a reduction in disk space used, allowing for faster and more cost-efficient disaster recovery and alleviating the headaches associated with managing the ever-growing storage requirements for file-based data.

As data continues to grow exponentially, it is not uncommon for file servers to fill to capacity, with much of that storage being used by files that are rarely, if ever, accessed. IT administrators are faced with increasing costs and wasted time spent backing up large files and restoring them after failover. With Double-Take Cargo, inactive files can be removed from the primary server and replaced by small stub files that transparently link to the full file content on the Double-Take target server. If a user accesses an archived file, it is transparently recalled back to the primary server with no difference in behavior to the end user. Administrators are able to restore files more quickly by only restoring these smaller files to the primary server, resulting in saved costs in time and storage space.

"Customers who are already using our Double-Take suite of products can leverage Cargo to manage existing copies of their production data and reduce the space required to store that data on their production server," said Bob Roudebush, director of solutions engineering for Double-Take Software. "By providing a product that requires less storage maintenance, Double-Take is going beyond disaster recovery and offering a fully integrated solution for our customers that are cost effective and more efficient."

Feature of Double-Take Cargo include:

• Integration with Existing Management Tools – Double-Take Cargo is integrated into the Double-Take Management Console so there is no new user interfaces or applications to learn, resulting in improved ease-of-use for IT administrators.
• Scheduled Archive of Older Files – Double-Take Cargo allows IT administrators to set up regularly scheduled scans to continually manage space available on the source server. These scheduled archives can be set to run on a daily to weekly basis at a set time..
• Ad-hoc archive and recall of individual files and folders – IT administrators also have the ability to begin an immediate archive of files based on the age and size of a file. Additionally, the administrator can select individual files or folders to immediately archive or recall from archive.
• Optimized Restore – Optimized restore allows you to recover the most important file-based data first, ensuring that you can be back up and running quickly after an outage. Recover just ‘pointers’ to the data or recover the most recently-used (and therefore more important) data first, and older data as time permits.