Highly Reliable Systems Adds Replication

Highly Reliable Systems, Inc., based in Reno, NE, has added replication to their NetSwap removable drive NAS.

Intended for backup, these products allow businesses to protect data multiple ways at a low cost. A key feature is the ability to replicate offsite and also transparently mirror between internal and removable drives. The mirrored drives can be pulled while keeping the primary drive online, allowing almost any backup software to be used, since drives don’t appear to go offline during drive swaps.

The removable drive can be transported for storage off-site or can be used to ‘seed’ a remote location with up to 4TB of data per drive. Once seeded, uni or bi-directional replication is used to keep the remote site(s) up to date.

Unlike backup appliances that require monthly fees, NetSwap products can be placed in any location, such in a second office, with a MSP, or even at an owner’s home. Replication over the Internet is incremental and block level so only changes are replicated. Integrated compression and encryption insure the Internet is efficiently used and that customer data is protected without requiring external VPN tunnels. Encryption levels up to AES-256 are supported. Synchronization jobs can be throttled and scheduled so that Internet connectivity is not bottlenecked during working hours.

Netswap products are available with up to four removable drives and an eight-drive model is expected to be released in July of 2013. The same replication functionality has been added to the RAIDFrame product line with up to 48TB of removable storage.

Thomas Hoops, CTO, Highly Reliable Systems, says: "Simple port forwarding is used to allow Netswaps to see each other over the Internet and low cost dynamic DNS services are supported so that no static IP addresses are required."

Hoops also said the NAS appliances support multiple replication jobs and can notify administrators with e-mail alerts upon the success or failure of a job. The system detects open and changing files and makes sure replication occurs at a point in time using a snapshot to insure data integrity.

Netswaps groom off-site data on a set schedule, checking to make sure the data is readable and matches the source. The appliance will join a Windows domain, and use NTFS formatting to allow removable drives to cross plug with the company’s line of USB3 products. This allows emergency access to data from any Windows machine.

Replication code is included in the cost of the appliance and pricing for 2TB models starts at $939.