For our original Exchange disaster recovery system using a SAN, we were replicating everything at a remote site, so we had to purchase twice as much equipment as we really needed. With AppAssure’s Replay, I don't have to have the same equipment at both sites. I can use my existing server hardware at the remote site and bring in newer, higher performing servers here.
—Mitch Chen, IT Executive

How Replay Works

Continuous Application Protection

With its patent-pending continuous application protection technology, Replay protects and validates the entire Exchange environment, including the operating system, the Exchange application, and the Exchange data, reducing the size and scope of Exchange failures and ensuring recoverability from any failure in minutes.

Replay 2007 is:

Scalable
Because Replay captures the entire Exchange environment at the volume block level, its performance impact is negligible, only 1-2%. Replay maintains an incremental image of the entire server on the Replay Recovery server, thus eliminating the backup window and painful brick-level backups. All of the processing is performed on the Replay server; the production server is relieved of the entire backup burden.

Reliable
Each data store within each recovery point is automatically checked for Exchange corruption, ensuring successful recoveries.

Fast
Replay captures the entire environment, so every recovery scenario, from bare-metal to individual message, is supported in only minutes.

Leveraging Virtualization

Since the introduction of virtualization technology, it has been possible to run multiple operating systems and applications on the same computer at the same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware. Replay 2007 leverages this technology by continually creating highly available, up-to-the-minute and application-stateful virtual machines of the production environment that are ready to take over at a moment’s notice.

Replay 2007 ensures that you can recover Exchange from any failure in minutes. It continually captures all of the volume level changes on the Exchange server and creates application-stateful recovery points on a Replay recovery server. The Exchange data stored within the recovery points are checked for corruption on the fly, ensuring a corruption-free snapshot.

Recovery points can then be used for fast recoveries or converted directly into VMware virtual machines for high-availability and application-testing purposes. The virtual machines are stored on the storage area network (SAN) and leverage the SAN infrastructure to replicate the virtual machines to a DR site.

The Mechanics of Replay

Replay inserts a thin layer of software (agent) directly above the volumes on the protected server. This agent software layer captures volume-level block changes for the entire server and interfaces with Microsoft® VSS to ensure application consistency. This approach is very scalable, since it is at such a low level and imposes a negligible performance impact to the protected server (1-2%). The captured blocks are stored on a Replay recovery server (any Windows 2003 server will do) and are virtualized as standard Windows mount points for disaster recovery and high availability purposes.

Learn More about the Power of Replay
Read more about the value of Replay to discover how our application assurance solutions can help you leverage your existing IT infrastructure into a competitive advantage, or download a free 30-day evaluation copy and try it for yourself.