Quadric Software

Benefits of Replication with Alike

Benefits of Replication with Alike

There are many benefits of replication with Alike. Ultimately, replication provides a Standby Copy of your systems in case your Production server has any issues. Another benefit is the efficiency with which Alike can replicate VMs. With Alike’s Dedupe Engine, Alike’s replication efficiently transfers only changed data, allowing for site-level protection, even in low bandwidth situations.

In addition, using Changed Block Tracking (CBT) for replication jobs dramatically reduces the time it takes to complete the job. In fact, the video above demonstrates a that subsequent CBT replication jobs can be completed in a fraction of the time it took the initial run.

It’s important to note that when running an initial CBT replication job, you will see a warning in the Job Progress window. This is only letting you know that initial jobs will take longer than subsequent jobs using CBT. For the job in the video and the screenshot above, the initial CBT replication took 27 minutes. The subsequent job took only 1 minute and 36 seconds.

Licensing and Supported Platforms

Another benefit is that Alike gives you the flexibility to replicate any VM from the source host to any target host, without the need to license the target host. You only need to license the hosts that have the VMs you are protecting. You may restore to any unlicensed host. For instance, if you replicate daily from a Prod server to a Dev server, and your Prod servers fail, you can bring up your VMs on your Dev servers. When you want to replicate back to Prod, you can do that without needing more licenses.

The only situation in which all hosts would need to be licensed is when replicating from a Dev server to a Prod, as well as from Prod to Dev. Lastly, just like backing up with Alike, the cross-platform support allows you to replicate a XenServer VM to a Hyper-V host and vice versa. This is ideal in mixed environments. Alike is one of the only solutions that provides that kind of flexibility with licensing, in addition to cross-platform support.

Combined with Alike’s global data deduplication, offsite vaulting capabilities, and many other powerful features, the benefits of replication with Alike make it a very compelling solution for any sized environment.

Related Articles

• Enhanced Replication with Alike DR
• Changed Block Tracking with Alike
• How to Get the Fastest Hyper-V Backups with CBT
• Top 5 Reasons Alike is the Best Solution for XenServer