US Air Force signs 'pay as you grow' back-up deal

The US Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence (AFCEE) has signed a deal with agentless back-up specialist Asigra to provide disaster recovery and business continuity services.

Asigra offers its Televaulting solution on a 'pay as you grow' basis, levying no charges for software, service or implementation, but rather charging on a metered basis, billed in relation to how much data is stored.

Ralph Miles, network administrator at AFCEE, said events such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001 raised military awareness of the need for effective back-up and disaster recovery.

Similarly, the threat of natural disaster, such as hurricane, tornado or earthquake, is a major issue for many areas within the US.

AFCEE had been seeking a solution it was happy with for two and a half years.

"Most people think of backup as a way to recover data, but more important is the ability to recover operating systems, applications and the necessary patches to bring back online all the system information," added Miles.

According to Asigra, the restore window has now been brought down to 150 minutes. That includes 2.5Tb of data backed up from 34 on-site computers at Brooks Air Force base, in Texas.

Much of the data, stored under strict military guidelines, must be kept for up to 50 years.

Eran Farajun, executive vice president at Asigra said: "Because of the requirements placed upon government entities in ensuring secure network infrastructures and minimising downtime of mission-critical computing environments, organisations like AFCEE need to implement distributed backup and recovery solutions that eliminate performance issues and reduce restore lag time."