How It Works

What is DataSafe Storage?

DataSafe Storage is a Powerful Online Backup Service to help you safeguard your valuable data. It is a dynamic and scalable off-site data replication service that provides organisations with the ability to replicate and store business critical data, safely and securely to highly available Tier Three Data Centre facilities.

What does DataSafe Storage do?

Powerful data compression technology allows large amounts of business data to be transferred at high speed over a variety of common communications links including ADSL, SDSL, Private, Ethernet & IP-VPN circuits.
Military strength (448-bit) data encryption provides over-the-wire data protection ensuring all business data is securely protected at all times during the electronic transfer process.

Is it secure?

On receipt of your data, all information is permanently encrypted into your data silos using high security crypto keys. The crypto key is known only to your organisation and provides you with exceptional levels of data security and protection. All DataSafe Storage services are delivered to ISO 9001 Quality Management standards and Data Centre services conform to the ISO 27001 Information Security standard. ITIL accredited service delivery managers complete the cycle of quality to ensure that the organisation receives a first class service delivered to International Standards.

How does DataSafe Storage work?

The DataSafe Storage software is accessed and controlled online via a web browser. From here you can control data back up preferences including frequency and flow of data.

How do you set the software up?

One of our engineers comes on site and will install the software and required licenses on your servers. A physical back up is also taken of all data, which is then duplicated at our data centre. You are then able to go online and activate your account via the interface software.

How is DataSafe Storage different from other desktop backup and laptop backup products?

DataSafe Storage is a flexible backup solution that works with your existing hardware. This flexibility allows it to be deployed in multiple modes - Service Provider Hosted Online Backup, Trusted Peer To Peer Backup and Typical Client-Server deployments.

Service Provider Hosted Online Backup: Online Backup service providers including MSPs, VARs, SIs etc. can use this deployment to offer an online backup service to their customers.

Trusted Peer To Peer Backup: DataSafe Storage provides an easy and intuitive mechanism to use the free space in user desktops in a network for backup purposes. DataSafe Storage’s P2P deployment capability is based on the concept of trusted peers in an intranet whose desktop space can be utilized in a peer-to-peer fashion.

Typical Client-Server deployments: This is a more traditional deployment - ideal for leveraging existing backup infrastructure by allowing customers to include desktop and laptop data. All the desktops and laptops run the DataSafe Storage in Client mode only, and they all back up their data to a central backup storage server.

Another important feature of DataSafe Storage is the ease with which end users can configure backups and restore them, when required, without the help of system administrators. DataSafe Storage allows centralized administration from a Web Console (Browser based), to make it easy for system administrators to manage and monitor Data Safe Storage deployments.

Can DataSafe Storage be used to backup desktops and laptops to a dedicated backup server inside the intranet?

Yes, DataSafe Storage can be used to backup desktops and laptops to a dedicated backup server inside the intranet. In this deployment, the dedicated backup server(s) should run DataSafe Storage in server mode and desktops and laptops should run DataSafe Storage in client mode.

Can DataSafe Storage be used for Remote Backups?

Yes, DataSafe Storage can be used to backup a computer to a Remote location provided the computer has direct connectivity to the Remote Backup server running DataSafe Storage / Vault.

How does DataSafe Storage do Open File Backups?

When DataSafe Storage backs up a file, it can detect automatically if the file has been changed. Hence DataSafe Storage can ensure that no file is backed up incorrectly. For files that change during a backup, DataSafe Storage does a best effort attempt continuously (in the background) until the backup for the file succeeds. In a desktop/laptop environment this strategy almost never fails. However, it is important that DataSafe Storage be allowed the requisite permission to access the file(s) that are to be backed up. For example, Microsoft Outlook cannot be backed up if it is open as DataSafe Storage cannot access the requisite files.

Can the DataSafe Storage Client be installed on a NAS file server to back it up to user desktop machines or other dedicated backup servers?

DataSafe Storage can be installed on Linux or Windows based NAS servers. It is possible to backup a NAS file server over the network to other user desktops or a dedicated backup server. If DataSafe Storage cannot be installed on a NAS filer, it will be possible to install DataSafe Storage on a PC, mount the NAS server and then back it up. In the case of NAS file servers; open file backup may not happen if a file is being continuously modified by an application. In Windows Storage Server, it is possible to use the Volume Shadow Copy feature to support Open File backups. In NAS filers where files are not modified continuously DataSafe Storage's open file backup should suffice.

What type of encryption does DataSafe Storage use to secure the data being backed up? How secure is my data?

DataSafe Storage uses the Blowfish encryption algorithm. You can get more information about blowfish algorithm at http://www.schneier.com/blowfish.html

Excerpts from the blowfish website: "Blowfish was designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier as a fast, free alternative to existing encryption algorithms. Since then it has been analyzed considerably, and it is slowly gaining acceptance as a strong encryption algorithm". DataSafe Storage will support other encryption algorithms as options in the future. As such your data is very secure as blowfish based encryption has never been broken before.

What happens if I forget my backup encryption password?

If you forget the backup encryption password, then there is no known way to decrypt your backed up data. So it is recommended that you write down the backup encryption password in a safe and secure place.

Does DataSafe Storage support backing up to peers over the Internet?

DataSafe Storage (Professional Edition) peers can communicate with each other and backup data over the Internet if there is direct connectivity between the peers. If the two peers are behind NAT, then you need to configure port forwarding in your NAT device to enable DataSafe Storage peers to connect to each other. If the two peers are just backing up to each other then you need to configure TCP port 32004 for port forwarding in your NAT device.

Does DataSafe Storage do incremental backups?

Yes, this can be controlled via online interface software.

I need to backup a large amount of data over the Internet and its taking too much time. Is there a better way?

Yes there is! Typically, your first backup takes the longest time/bandwidth. Thereafter, if you've enabled incremental backups (which you should be doing if you're backing up online), only changes in files/folders are backed up. These incremental backups consume lot less time & bandwidth! DataSafe Storage has a feature that allows you to take the first 'heavy' backup locally to say, a USB Disk, physically move the data to a remote server, and thereafter seamlessly continue with incremental backups directly to the remote server.

What are 'additional full backups' and why do I need them?

Typically, you would take a first full backup and incremental backups thereafter. This way, only changes in files/folders are backed up during future backups. However, in some cases, you may prefer to take a full backup every once in a while for various reasons. DataSafe Storage supports this as well. Once you've decided your incremental backup schedule, select the"Configure additional full backups" option and configure your full backups as required. This option is a part of the 'Advanced Options' that can be configured by clicking the 'Advanced Options' button under Step 5 (Scheduling) in the 'Backup-->Add Backup Schedule' menu.

I have an external hard disk. Can I use this with DataSafe Storage / Vault?

You certainly can!

Can DataSafe Storage work in any Linux distribution?

DataSafe Storage is well tested on Redhat 8.0, Redhat 9.0, Fedora Core 3, Fedora Core 4, Mandrake 10.x, SuSE 9.x, Debian 3.x, Ubuntu 5.x. We expect DataSafe Storage to work in most flavors of Linux if the installation of DataSafe Storage goes through fine. During installation DataSafe Storage compiles its own bundled Apache and PHP. So DataSafe Storage installation will require the following packages to be installed in the Linux system: make, gcc, g++, libc6-dev, libxml2, libxml2-dev and libstdc++5, bison, flex. If you want to try a linux distribution, we suggest that you try the DataSafe Storage build (Redhat, Debain etc.) which is closer to your target system.

I know DataSafe Storage works across Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD operating Systems. Does that mean the backups and restore can also be done across different operating systems?

Yes, DataSafe Storage not only works across different operating systems, it is also interoperable across the supported operating systems. That is, you can backup your Mac OS X to a Windows or Linux OR backup your Windows to a Linux or Mac OS X and so on. The only limitation is that when you restore your data to any client machine (other than the originator machine), the new client machine has to support the same matching endian byte order. For example, a Mac OS X can backup to a Windows. But the backed up data has to be restored by only another Mac OS X system. This is because the blowfish encryption algorithm DataSafe Storage uses is based on the endianess of the machine. If all the different machines are based on Intel processor, then there should not be any problems with the restore across operating systems.

I see that DataSafe Storage uses the SQLite database. Can I replace the SQLite database in my backup server with PostgreSQL, MySQL or MS-SQL Server etc?

Technically it is possible to replace the SQLite database with any other SQL-92 compliant database. We are currently working on supporting other databases (such as, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server) for DataSafe Storage internal databases and it is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2009.