Axcient’s Data Protection Appliance and Service

By Claude Bouffard, SSG-NOW validation engineer

The Axcient Data Protection solution is a two-tiered data storage appliance and service for small- to medium-size businesses (SMBs). This comprehensive data protection solution combines on-site data protection with off-site data storage without the need of a third-party backup application. This SSG-NOW product validation explores how the Axcient appliance and service can be deployed and back up data in less than five minutes. This report also explores how the appliance can be used as a backup, recovery and off-site platform for local and remote data protection.

The Axcient architecture includes the Axcient appliance, RapidRestore Data Backup Services and the Axcient offsite data center. The local appliance sits inside the firewall at the customer’s location and is used to backup and recover user-defined data from Windows, Linux and Mac OS X laptops and desktops. The Axcient appliance is available in several storage capacities ranging from 500GB to 10TB with both RAID-1 and RAID-5 configurations depending on model.

Data transfers between the Axcient appliance and the Axcient data center occur at the speed of the customer’s Internet connection and can be controlled by how much of the Internet bandwidth is allocated to these operations. If bandwidth for offsite backup is limited, Axcient provides the option of a direct attach storage (DAS) device for the initial data transfer. Once initial data has been backed up, only changed data blocks are transferred to the remote data site.

Ease of Installation

SSG-NOW started the validation by connecting the appliance on its corporate network. With just a few network input settings to provide, the appliance was configured and on-line. SSG-NOW next specified which workstations to protect including directories and file types to include and how often to protect the data via the Axcient GUI interface. SSG-NOW noted that no software was required to be installed on each workstation, saving valuable steps and set up time. The only thing that was required on each workstation was to enable “Print and File Sharing” from the Windows Firewall exceptions list. For large installations, the Axcient appliance also has an auto-discovery feature that discovers all workstations.

SSG-NOW found the GUI user interface to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. The main interface lets users manage a single Axcient appliance. From the GUI, users can perform administrative tasks including monitoring the appliance, adding devices to protect, display reports and other administrative-type tasks. Axcient also has a remote management console to monitor multiple Axcient appliances from a single console.

Configuration and Scheduling

SSG-NOW created the backup devices for each of the three workstations being used in the validation, identified the dataset to protect, protection type (both onsite and offsite, or just onsite) for each data set and specified when to back up data. SSG-NOW noted that critical data can be backed up daily or even hourly according to business requirements. The appliance also has an on demand backup feature for instant backup of the data set.

Once the three workstations were configured for data protection by the Axcient appliance, nightly backups were configured and on demand backups were instantly performed. The management console was used by SSG-NOW to monitor backup performance including CPU utilization, disk I/O and network I/O resources.

Users can restore backed up data from any backed up image to any device, from a single file or an entire backup job. Axcient has three restore options for data recovery:

• Complete Restore – full restore from a backup job
• Selective Restore – subset from a backed up job
• Search and Restore – search for files from within a backup job

SSG-NOW tested each restore option from the Axcient GUI. A complete restore operation was restored from a selected backup image. Next, SSG-NOW selected a sub-set of a data set to restore, in this case the Axcient appliance restores the file to a directory called RESTORED. From here, the user can view or move restored files. Finally SSG-NOW performed a search and restore for all file with a .zip file extension to the RESTORED directory. In each case, the data selected to be restored was successfully recovered.

Axcient Appliance Models

Features/Models	500	1000	2000	3000	4000	5000	6000	7000
Storage Capacity	500GB	1TB	2TB	3TB	4TB	5TB	6TB	10TB
RAID	RAID-1	RAID-1	RAID-5	RAID-5	RAID-5	RAID-5	RAID-5	RAID-5
Ethernet	10/100/1000 (two ports	Same	Same	Same	Same	Same	Same	Same
Power supply	Single	Single	Dual	Dual	Dual	Dual	Dual	Dual
Chassis	Set top/1U	Set top/1U	1U	2U	2U	2U	2U	2U
Hot swap drives	N/A	N/A	4	4	8	8	8	Axcient First Look Final 63009

SSG-NOW Assessment

Axcient’s data protection solution helps small to medium size business meet their recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO/RTO) by providing on-site data protection with off-site cloud storage. Utilizing a Web-based management platform that requires no software installation and is accessible by authorized administrators from any location, Axcient eliminates the need to purchase and manage 3rd-party backup applications. With its simple, easy-to-use role based interface, administrators can quickly configure, manage, and protect their critical data, both locally and at a remote off-site data center through Axcient encrypted data protection storage.

Small businesses are constantly struggling with complex and costly backup solutions to protect and manage their data protection infrastructure, often times with no designated IT resources. SSG-NOW has validated that the Axcient complete data protection services provides a cost-effective solution to ensure that data is being protected and available in the event of a disaster. The concept of on-premise data protection appliance with off-site cloud storage make the Axcient appliance and service a secure and cost-effective way for SMBs to ensure rapid data recovery and continuous data availability.