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Keeping problems from becoming disasters

Johannesburg, 16 Jul 2010

Ingran Africa, a local storage specialist and distributor of the Zenith Advanced Recovery and Continuity Appliance (ARCA), has announced the availability of its new near-line business continuity appliance.

ARCA is affordable and offers backup and restore options for businesses looking to independently maintain and monitor their systems.

The Zenith ARCA provides the speed and reliability of enterprise-class business continuity and recovery solutions without the enterprise-class price. It uses the same proven technology of Zenith's Backup & Disaster Recovery Platform that has been implemented into thousands of IT environments worldwide.

Ingran Africa managing director Andre Moller says ARCA is a complete standalone product, a network-attached storage device for Windows Servers that is preloaded with backup, recovery, and virtualisation software. “Available in four models, ARCA provides a business continuity solution for companies of any size looking to deploy a standalone system that can be maintained and monitored independently.”

Zenith ARCA is a perfect complement or replacement to existing tape backups because of its ability to provide near-term, near-line recovery from a single file, database or mail message, up to a full production server, in minutes.

Through its unique ARCA-to-ARCA replication feature, solution providers can virtualise failed servers remotely in a fraction of the time typically required of other restoration options. The appliance meets the RPO standards by indefinitely storing 48 hours of backups at 15-minute intervals, 14 daily backups, five weekly backups, and 30-day backups.

When compared to other backup or storage solutions, the Zenith ARCA offers a unique set of features that set it apart:

* Block level transfer for more efficient, reliable backups
* Fifteen minute incremental snapshots for more frequent recovery point objectives
* Total Windows server backup preserves OS and applications, not just data
* Restore systems in a fraction of the time of conventional backups
* Automatic and non-disruptive with no backup windows needed
* Exchange granular recovery, restore down to the message level
* Rapid failover server virtualisation, right on the ARCA
* Bare metal restore, even to dissimilar hardware
* Industry standard encryption to keep your backups safe
* Multiple replication schemes
* Integrated management and reporting
* The ARCA meets the RPO standards of higher priced continuity solutions by storing 48 hours of backups at 15-minute intervals, 14 daily backups, five weekly backups and 30-day backups forever!

“For many IT departments, these terms are often synonymous with backing up to tape or external hard drive. But in truth, that's just a backup. If you house backup data at an off-site storage facility, then you have the start of a disaster recovery plan. At this point, most companies feel that if they can put their hands on their data they have a degree of business continuity,” he explains.

But maintaining business continuity, using the data to repair or recover from a problem in a short timeframe, is often an unforeseen impossibility. The penalty for extended downtime is lost productivity and revenue.

Moller says for IT departments of all sizes, the Zenith ARCA can be a lifesaver if there is a catastrophic server failure. “But what about the day-to-day issues that have you scouring disk and tape backups for a deleted file? With the Zenith ARCA, time spent goes from days and hours to minutes and seconds.”

“For security purposes, your data is fully encrypted. We employ the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm because it has never been broken and is currently considered the gold standard of encryption techniques and renders transmitted data immune to theft,” he concludes.

For more information, contact Ingran Africa on (011) 454-6113 or e-mail sales@ingran.co.za or visit http://www.ingran.co.za.

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Ingran Africa

Ingran Africa, a privately owned South African company that was formed in 2002, is a specialist supplier of products and services in its three focus areas namely thin client technologies, enterprise data storage solutions and bandwidth compression and management. The company is a registered black economic empowered (BEE) company with a level 2 rating from BEE Matrix.

Ingran Africa is focused on bringing new emerging data storage technology solutions into the South African market. The Company specialises in data storage infrastructure, data storage management software, implementation services and disaster tolerance/recovery planning services. Its solutions represented are from new storage technology OEM's that offer compelling solutions with real business benefits.

Its mission is to supply and support best of breed IT solutions within the boundaries of its focus. Its primary loyalty is to its clients and its commitment is to provide them with high quality, dependable business solutions at a fair price, thereby establishing long-term business relationships and supporting them on an ongoing basis.

The company focuses on areas where it has experience and competence so that it can deliver a professional and value added service to its clients. Competencies include electronic business including electronic office implementation and support, e-mail, fax and office software integration and support.

Ingran Africa has been greatly involved with the data storage market; it has identified the need for a specialised data protection company delivering high levels of service as a “one-stop solutions provider”. The company has built a trusted reputation in the IT industry with partnerships being awarded by local and international companies.

Its strategy is to provide the best business solution at a fair price and to build long-term relationships coupled with the best customer service. Its skills allow it to approach customers differently from its competitors, as it is not bound to a particular technology or brand. It also allows Ingran Africa to integrate different technologies and to deliver the best solution to its customers.

Editorial contacts

Ivor van Rensburg
IT Public Relations
(+27) 082 652 8050
ivor@itpr.co.za