What is continuous protection?

One unique benefit of LiveVault is the option to protect data continuously, throughout the day, not just at night, like most backup software. Once a customer subscribes to the LiveVault InSync, they perform what we call an initial synchronization of their servers (like a full backup).

This is only done once. After this, LiveVault is only sending the actual changed blocks of files. We use snapshot technology to ensure that we always get access to the files at a consistent point in time. We also take advantage of Microsoft file system filter drivers that track the changes to files. This allows us to only need to scan the specific blocks of files that have actually changed - significantly reducing the time needed to do this. We then package them up (compress, encrypt) and securely transmit them to the secure IBM vaulting facility. We are doing this on a periodic basis (typically every 15 minutes).

It is very important to note that there is generally a “latency” of a few minutes between when changes happen and when LiveVault has successfully received those changes. It is important to note that customers also have multiple historic versions of files available for restore in addition to the most current versions. See the “What versions of data can I restore?” section to learn more about the historic versions available for restore.