Disaster recovery protects an organization from the impact of natural disasters and cyberattacks. With decades of data storage and archive understanding, StrongLink has been developed to deliver a suite of features that address natural as well as cyberattack disasters. StrongLink provides a rich set of functionalities that enables an organization to implement a comprehensive physical disaster recovery plan, tailored to meet the specific business needs.
On-Way / Single Site
StrongLink supports secondary site replication protect and maintain operational configuration in an active – passive configuration. This provides organizations the ability to “fail over” to the secondary site (including cloud service providers) and restore StrongLink services in the event of a disaster.
Bi-Directional / Multi-Site
StrongLink can be configured across multiple sites to replicate data and maintain operation as an active – active configuration. This provides organizations the ability to extend the StrongLink global view across multiple sites allowing not only disaster recovery but also organizational control of data across geographically disperse locations including cloud service providers.
StrongLink is inherently resilient to traditional system failures, through replication and cluster node redundancy. StrongLink can be configured in as a single instance that can be backed up and replicated through single-site replication to a secondary site. For greater on premises resiliency StrongLink instances can be clustered as a scale out configuration to implement higher levels of availability and performance.
StrongLink incorporates workflow engines that can be programmed to meet the specific business needs to automate a disaster restoration by defining specific levels of data protection based on the file classification; called data-centric policy management. Through StrongLink’s data-centric policy management autonomic workflows based on the sequence of restoration are implemented, removing manual intervention, which is time consuming, error prone, costly, and disruptive.
Through StrongLink’s metadata architecture, it inherently maintains constant version control of all data in the enterprise including individuals and systems that have accessed the system. This ensures that organizations can identify when changes have been made to isolate unauthorized changes. Complete version history of all data accessed by users and metadata of all files, and folders, providing a complete chain of custody of all changes and access. StrongLink version exports enable immediate recovery to a previous point in time for authorized users, without the need for IT intervention. This allows StrongLink to support Point-in-Time Recovery of Data Recovery from events such as accidental data deletion, ransomware attacks, and logic errors cannot be addressed through data replication because the unintended changes also apply to the redundant copy.
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StrongLink supports secondary site replication protect and maintain operational configuration in an active – passive configuration. This provides organizations the ability to “fail over” to the secondary site (including cloud service providers) and restore StrongLink services in the event of a disaster.
StrongLink can be configured across multiple sites to replicate data and maintain operation as an active – active configuration. This provides organizations the ability to extend the StrongLink global view across multiple sites allowing not only disaster recovery but also organizational control of data across geographically disperse locations including cloud service providers.
StrongLink is designed as a high availability architecture though clustering to perform failover within a single site. Nodes can be added as required to increase performance and availability as an active – active configuration. This provides organizations the ability to service StrongLink nodes without disruption, and to add nodes to add resiliency without interruption.
Source: Horison Information Strategies
StrongLink’s ability to create copies of data across various storage media and file systems enables organizations to implement the widely used 3-2-1-1 data protection strategy. The 3-2-1-1 rule states that organizations should keep three copies of backups on two different media types, one copy of which is kept offsite and one air-gapped offline copy. By keeping copies air-gapped and electrically isolated, data protection is assured from attackers gaining access to data through cyber security attack vectors.
Source: Horison Information Strategies
The Tape media format has been an air gapped technology since its inception. The growing cybercrime wave has positioned tape storage air gaps in the middle of the cybersecurity ecosystem (as data cannot be hacked when stored behind a physical air gap). As such, today’s most effective cybersecurity strategies include air gapped tape.
StrongLink’s tape functionality supports multiple generations of the LTFS tape file system format. Combined with StrongLink’s jobs, it can perform all of the functions required by organizations to manage the tape drive to ensure that data is written, validated, moved, copied and retrieved with a chain of custody to completely realize implementation of the 3-2-1-1 rule.
With a deep heritage in managing tape libraries, StrongLink’s Tape library control is a critical factor to realize off-line, air gap tape security. Logical air gaps rely on network access controls or operator commands to create isolation within a tape library (a cold partition) from production and primary backup environments. StrongLink allows organizations to wall off the disconnected media to prevent manual access. Air gapped backups can be brought back online and accessed via separately.
StrongLink’s ability to maintain its own tape catalog is a key factor to realize this security. Library locations can be allocated for various purposes including to support organizational retention policies for long term data archive of data, for migration to another location, typically a lower-cost, highly secure tape storage environment and frees up the space in the library / volume.
StrongLink takes air gap protection to the next level by offering physical, logical or virtual air-gapped library partitions with separate Tape Catalogs consisting of physical slots that are made invisible to external applications.
Tape air gaps become even more important since the archive copy is typically the only copy of data, increasing the potential exposure to cybercrime damages.
StrongLink’s data curation combined with Workflow Automation enables Data Centric policy management. This ensures organizations realize autonomic workflows based on the realize the proper sequence of data restoration is implemented, removing manual intervention, which is time consuming, error prone, costly, and disruptive.
StrongLink incorporates workflow engines that can be programmed to meet the specific business needs to automate a disaster restoration by defining specific levels of data protection based on the file classification; called data-centric policy management. Through StrongLink’s data-centric policy management autonomic workflows based on the sequence of restoration are implemented, removing manual intervention, which is time consuming, error prone, costly, and disruptive.
Through StrongLink’s metadata architecture, it inherently maintains constant version control of all data in the enterprise including individuals and systems that have accessed the system. This ensures that organizations can identify when changes have been made to isolate unauthorized changes. Complete version history of all data accessed by users and metadata of all files, and folders, providing a complete chain of custody of all changes and access. StrongLink version exports enable immediate recovery to a previous point in time for authorized users, without the need for IT intervention. This allows StrongLink to support Point-in-Time Recovery of Data Recovery from events such as accidental data deletion, ransomware attacks, and logic errors cannot be addressed through data replication because the unintended changes also apply to the redundant copy.