StoneFly Eases Backup For Small And Midsize BusinessesStoneFly Eases Backup For Small And Midsize Businesses

Any company that can find a few hours of system downtime each day is lucky. In the Internet age, when customers and partners are diving into data nonstop, backup and recovery becomes more of a challenge. Add the desire to back up information more than once a day and the fact that many small- and medium-business customers don't have the resources to do the job, and it becomes nearly impossible.

StoneFly Networks Inc. on Monday unveiled new capabilities for any small- and midsize-business customer trying to clean up the data-backup process. The StoneFly Backup Advantage appliance already plugs into existing IP networks and provides a simple-to-use backup and recovery system. The enhancement is a zero-backup-window capability that should allow customers to back up production servers without interrupting operations.

The vendor accomplishes this with its Reflection synchronous-mirroring software built into the appliance. Stonefly's new snapshot capability uses a split-mirror technique to pull data from production servers without taking them offline. Reflection creates a momentary pause in the server that's unnoticeable to users on the network before backing up data to another server or storage system.

An industry analyst thinks Reflection could help many customers avoid breaking up online transactions while backing up data, which can lead to corrupted information. "Now StoneFly could ensure nice and clean backup for SMB customers," says Diane McAdam, an analyst at IT research firm Data Mobility Group. "More importantly, it could ensure that business users easily restore information in times of trouble."