CloudBank Technical Details

Overview

CloudBank exists to provide organisations, both large and small, with the ability to backup and store their data offsite. Not only is an offsite backup a regulatory requirement for businesses operating in certain sectors, it is essential for any business wishing to continue operating successfully in the event of a disaster.

After a simple installation and configuration, client data will be encrypted, compressed and backed up from the client workstations or servers to the Brownsman CloudBank Servers. Should large volumes of data be involved, an initial seed backup can be taken directly from the client to the primary data centre based in Newcastle and uploaded manually. Incremental backups can then continue over the client’s regular network connection at times convenient to their business. All backups are then replicated to our Manchester facility over secure VLAN, to provide a second level of backup for our clients.

The Cloudbank Software has the following features:

• Backup workstations and servers running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
• Backup file servers and database servers: Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Sharepoint etc.
• Backup specific files or folders.
• Backup mapped drives
• Intuitive and advanced browser based HTML/AJAX user interface.
• Block level incremental backups.
• Extensive scheduling options, including continuous backup.
• High performance compression achieves up to 95% compression.
• User configured (up to 448 bit) encryption key guarantees data privacy and facilitates compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Virtually unlimited versioning with advanced retention policies
• Quick restore options with ability to restore any version of single file/folder
• Open file backup using Volume Shadow Copy Service (Windows)
• Comprehensive reports and dashboards with email notification options
• Easily handles large file backups with no limits on file size
• Bandwidth throttling
• Synthetic full backups
• Ability to manually seed first backup and run incremental backups thereafter.

The Hardware

The servers we use are provided by Hewlett Packard. They are fully scalable giving the ability to provide more than enough compute power to cope with and exceed any potential demand for the service. The data is stored on a series of RAID 5 arrays, allowing for an excellent level of fault tolerance with potentially no need for downtime in the event of a drive failure. We run with a derivative of the industry standard RedHat Linux operating system.

The Network

Our servers are located at data centres operated by Wildcard Networks, located in NE5, on the outskirts of Newcastle City Centre and M15, on the outskirts of Manchester.

Features of the NE5 Facility

• Power is provided by resilient UPS configuration providing reliable, clean power. Should a prolonged utility power outage occur, the onsite generator could provide power indefinitely.
• Security is monitored 24/7.
• The facility is connected to the core network by multiple diverse fibre connections. The facility utilises multiple tier-1 upstream Internet providers including Level3 Communications, KPN, Global Crossing, TATA, and Abovenet.
• The network has been designed with reliability in mind. The network forms a ring ensuring that no single point of failure exists on the core. This provides us with a 99.95% network availability SLA.