Horizon DataSys Whitepaper
Today’s IT professionals are under siege! Everyday they need to deal with computer user problems, new more sophisticated viruses, software conflicts, system crashes and the very real potential of employee sabotage. All this in addition to maintaining networks, deploying hundreds or thousands of PC’s, determining company hardware and software standards, and supporting users.
The importance of taking measures to maintain the integrity of corporate data has never been more apparent. However, traditional perimeter security, such as firewalls, anti-virus and intrusion detection software only mitigate some of the risks. Experienced professionals know it is not a question as to “if” security will be breached but “when”. - And how can we recover with minimal downtime.
What is needed is an additional layer of security that eliminates or reduces the impact of a security breach. Systems need to be returned to their pre-attack state quickly. This layer of security is referred to as disaster recovery or system continuity software. Fortunately, software that can recover a PC from a virus attack and return it to its fully functional state can also recover a PC crashed for any other reason such as user error or software incompatibilities. Properly used, this software can ensure that no user data is ever lost.
Ask any executive today; “What is more valuable, the PC and all its software or the company data stored on the PC?” the answer will be “The data”. Systems can easily be purchased, data is much more difficult to replace, thus more valuable. Today’s disaster recovery solution must make guarding such a valuable asset a top priority.
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Current methods of restoring crashed PCs, although adequate, are far from ideal. The most common methods included; requiring users to periodically back up personal files to the server, local backup policies, and the use of ghosting software. The problem with using the combination of these solutions to ensure complete data integrity and business continuity is that it still requires a lot of human integration. IT professionals are all too aware of the difficulties of getting end users to save their data to the server, let alone perform periodic backups. Requiring an end user to back up data provides very little guarantee it will get done on a regular basis, leaving a certain amount of data constantly vulnerable to a system crash.
Ghosting technology is a very valuable tool for performing mass deployments of PCs, however ghosting falls short as a disaster recovery tool. Typically, the image being ghosted is the baseline configuration; operating systems and standard applications only. A user whose system is being restored using ghosting technology will lose ALL data, resulting in lost time and money. Additionally, ghosting solutions still require a technician to insert a disk into the crashed system. Help desk technicians are typically very busy, making a prompt restoration unlikely. How many of us have had to wait several hours for a technician to service our PC? Lastly, ghosting is dependant on network speed, trying to re-image a PC in the middle of the workday can take several hours, once again leaving the employee unproductive. Today’s patchwork of solutions falls short since they leave too much to chance, likely do not protect all the data, are expensive, as they require technical assistance, and take a very long to restore a PC, keeping employees from doing their jobs.
Horizon DataSys has developed RollBack Rx, a solution that can recover a crashed PC within seconds while addressing all the shortcomings of the previously mentioned solutions. RollBack Rx is a revolutionary product, based on groundbreaking technology. Basically, it creates a “virtual shield” around the protected data while still allowing the data to be accessed and manipulated. It does not use back-up technology; therefore it doesn’t require additional hard drive or server storage space. RollBack Rx enables a system to be fully recovered within seconds, regardless of wether the crash was due to a hacker, virus attack or user error. It can even rescue a PC whose drive has been formatted AND Fdisked!
RollBack Rx protects everything on your PC with a subsystem and a kernel system. The subsystem and kernel system creates a sector map and virtual shield rendering the operating system unaware of data movement at the sector level. Given that all data located on sectors has a corresponding entry on the sector map, RollBack Rx designates each sector that has sector map entry as “Used”. Conversely all sectors that do not have data with a corresponding sector map entry are designated as “Free”. Upon installation, the hard drive is classified by the kernel system protecting the “Used” sectors under the virtual shield. This classification is completely independent of the operating system.
Any changes after the installation of RollBack Rx are classified as “Snapshot Used” sectors. The “Snapshot Used” sector classification renders all changed data uniquely identifiable. “Snapshot Used” sectors are an extension of the “Used” sectors with linked pointers. The operating system is not aware that there is a two-stage link pointer between the data (between the used and snapshot used sectors).
Windows system recovery becomes rather easy. In order to return the PC to a predetermined state or snapshot, the only action required is the removal of the link pointer between the “Snapshot Used” and “Used” classified sectors. The data is instantly rolled back to “snapshot stage”.
Many organizations have static computers. These are the training PCs, library PCs, equipment controllers (projector) and shared PC's (public access computers) . Although these PCs do not contain any vital data, it is important that they be constantly available. With RollBack Rx and its scheduled recovery feature, the PC will restore itself to its predetermined desired state regularly; eliminating recent changes, ensuring it is always optimally configured. These PCs in effect are “self supporting” lowering administration costs to nearly zero.
Currently, supporting remote and traveling users and their laptops is an ordeal. Whether the support issue is due to a virus, software conflict or even user error, walking “non-power-users” through a series of troubleshooting procedures is far from easy. With RollBack Rx remote and travel users will simply need to reboot, hit one key and they will return the system to its previously predetermined, fully functional state. With an appropriately scheduled snapshot, data loss should be minimal. The need to ship “crashed” PCs to and from the support center is eliminated, doing away with expensive shipping costs. Additionally, the travel user will no longer face the embarrassment of performing a presentation without his/her laptop, lost sales opportunities and cancelled appointments are a thing of the past.
RollBack Rx is so easy to use even the least technically proficient user can derive great benefits. Users will no longer need a technician to assist them to reconfigure the system, reinstall the operating system, application or device drivers With RollBack Rx with one keystroke the PC is protected and restored. Using the scheduled snapshot and multiple snapshot features, system administrators can ensure that each PC is regularly and quickly updated and can be returned to more than one fully functional predetermined state. Users are more productive as they no longer need to wait several hours for a technician to perform a relatively simple task. Instead of re-installing drivers, operating systems or applications technicians can now be used more effectively and on more important IT projects. IT professionals will love the benefits of centralized risk control. In the event of a faulty software upgrade, software glitch, virus or sabotage, instantly and remotely rollback every PC to a perfectly functioning state.
Horizon DataSys Whitepaper
