Imagine if Luke Skywalker had only one copy of the Death Star plans. That would be a recipe for a galactic disaster. In our less interstellar, but no less important, digital world, protecting your data is as crucial as safeguarding the galaxy. If you haven’t heard of it yet, the 3-2-1 backup strategy can be your shield against the dark side of data loss. This article covers everything from the basics of the 3-2-1 backup rule to advanced strategies. 

This is what you will learn in the next few minutes:

1. What is the 3-2-1 backup strategy?
2. Why is the 3-2-1 rule essential for data protection? 
3. How to implement the 3-2-1 backup method effectively? 
4. The role of off-site backup in the 3-2-1 strategy 
5. Understanding the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy 

The 3-2-1 strategy is like having your own interstellar rescue team. It’s about keeping three copies of your data (because two is too few and four, well, that’s just overkill for most earthlings). These copies are stored on two different types of media, with one located far enough away to survive an alien invasion (or, more likely, a natural disaster).

Data loss is a universal menace; it shows up uninvited and wreaks havoc. From accidentally deleting your master’s thesis to falling prey to a cyberattack, the ways to lose data are as varied as the creatures in the Mos Eisley Cantina. That’s why the 3-2-1 rule is not just a suggestion; it’s a must-have in your rebel arsenal. 

Painting A Sobering Picture Of Today’s Digital Landscape 

“2023 has unveiled a stark reality in the digital realm: a surge of hacking groups exploiting vulnerabilities to launch attacks across numerous industries. Cybercrime, in all of its many forms, is here to stay. Too many organizations are making too much money for them to ever die. As we all know, ransomware and vulnerability incidents exemplify the daily threats that organizations face, leading to significant operational and financial repercussions,” said Ken Barth, CEO of Catalogic Software. 

“These developments have made it clear that a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy is no longer optional but essential. As the market evolves, we are seeing more and more creativity as the attackers gain experience on how best to penetrate their targets,” he added. 

Piecing Together Your 3-2-1 Backup Strategy Team 

Creating a 3-2-1 backup plan is like assembling your backup team. You need different professionals (or backup solutions) with unique powers (like cloud storage, external hard drives, and network-attached storage). Each plays a crucial role in defending your digital universe. 

Keeping one of your backups off-site is like having a secret base in another galaxy. It’s your last line of defense against local threats, whether it’s a flood, fire, or a rampaging T-Rex (you never know!). Cloud storage is a popular choice here, offering a haven far from earthly dangers. 

Choosing the right tools for your backup strategy is like picking the perfect wand in Ollivanders. It’s not about the fanciest, most expensive option; it’s about what suits your needs. Consider factors like storage capacity, security features, and ease of use before making your choice. 

The Evolution of Backups 

To prevent a catastrophe where half your data universe disappears with a snap, you need to adopt best practices. This includes regular testing of your backups, keeping your software updated to ward off cyber threats, and staying vigilant against the ever-present danger of human error. 

The journey from floppy disks to cloud storage is like moving from horse-drawn carriages to hyper-speed spacecraft. Today’s backup solutions are more accessible, reliable, and user-friendly, offering peace of mind that was once the stuff of science fiction. 

Introducing Catalogic Software: A Vanguard in Data Protection 

Catalogic Software stands as a bastion in the realm of data protection and bare metal restoration. Functioning as a crucial layer in the cybersecurity ecosystem of their customers, Catalogic supplements existing endpoint solutions and feeds data into their SIEM systems.  

They recognize that data protection, including bare metal restoration capabilities, is a customer’s last line of defense against various causes of outages. 

With three decades of expertise in data protection, Catalogic is incessantly working to counteract escalating cyber threats. Their DPX’s threat detection feature, GuardMode, and flexible 3-2-1 storage capabilities form the cornerstone of their approach.  

By scanning files for malicious actors before backing them up and ensuring multiple layers of data immutability protection through read-only techniques, cloud object lock, or tape backups, Catalogic empowers customers with confidence in the safety of their backups. 

Closing Thoughts: The Force is Strong with the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy 

In a world where data is as precious as the rarest kyber crystals, the 3-2-1 backup strategy is your lightsaber in the fight against data loss. Whether facing the dark side of cyberattacks, natural disasters, or human error, this strategy ensures that your data remains safe and recoverable.

May the backups be with you always!

Introduction

In the ever-evolving realm of business, SAP HANA stands as an indispensable cornerstone for myriad organizations, delivering potent database and data management capabilities. Ensuring the impregnability of your SAP HANA data through a regime of unwavering backups transcends mere good practice—it is a calculated strategic imperative.

The Necessity of Backing Up SAP HANA Data

Whether orchestrating On Premise SAP HANA systems or harnessing the dynamic potential of SAP HANA Cloud, the rationale behind data backup resonates profoundly:
1. Data Fortification and Rapid Recovery: The practice of regular backups provides a resilient safety net, ensuring the swiftest recovery from the depths of data loss, system glitches, or unexpected calamities. SAP HANA Cloud’s automated backups, attaining a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) as brisk as 15 minutes, adds an indispensable layer of data resilience.
2. Mitigation of Inherent Risks: Backups stand as the vanguard against potential menaces—ranging from data corruption and hardware hiccups to inadvertent deletions.
3. Conformance to Stringent Regulations: In a realm of stringent industry mandates, where data retention and shielded preservation are pivotal, regular backups stand as the sentinel ensuring compliance.
4. Adaptive Recovery Possibilities: SAP HANA backups offer a spectrum of adaptable data restoration timelines, aligning seamlessly with varying recovery requisites.
5. Sustaining Consistency and Wholeness: For denizens of the SAP HANA Cloud, automated backups perpetuate the most recent database integrity, guaranteeing data’s untarnished sanctity.
6. Mitigating Downtime Significantly: An adeptly executed backup strategy truncates downtime during system maintenance and unforeseen operational disruptions.
7. Synergy Across Hybrid Environments: Solutions synonymous with uniform data guardianship, spanning on-premises locales and cloud expanse, etch the epitome of uninterrupted operations.
8. Augmented Cloud Synthesis: Selective backup solutions offer the avant-garde capability of directly funneling backups to cloud terrains, elevating disaster recovery prospects.
9. Intrinsic Log and Data Backups: The SAP HANA Cloud landscape is marked by daily comprehensive data backups coupled with log data backups conducted at 15-minute intervals—a harmonious synergy for curbing data loss.
10. Economical and Uninterrupted Availability: SAP HANA Cloud’s inclusions encompass backup storage sans supplementary overheads, ensconcing data protection with an uninterrupted cadence.

Catalogic DPX: Your Solution for SAP HANA Data Backup

Catalogic DPX integrates with the SAP backint interfaces of SAP HANA to provide complete protection of the SAP HANA Data and Databases using native SAP HANA applications and tools.

Native Integration

SAP HANA administrators use SAP Tools every day to manage the databases and data protection as a critical part of these activities. Therefore, DPX has tightly integrated with the SAP native tools like SAP HANA Cockpit and Studio that Database administrators can easily start and schedule DPX SAP HANA Backups without having to access the DPX Management Console.

Point in time Recovery

DPX delivers point in time recovery of databases by levering the database andlog backups. By rolling forward logs on top of the backup data, DPX allows administrators to easily pick a specific point in time to recover the databases to. This allows our customers to pick up from where they left before the disaster struck.

Choose your destination – Disk, Tape, or Cloud

Disk, Tape or Cloud: DPX provides the ability to write SAP HANA backups to the destination of your choice: vStor (next generation storage agnostic backup repository built using modern open-source components and micro-services), Tape or the Cloud.

Highlights of Catalogic DPX for SAP HANA Backup:

• Seamless Integration: Catalogic DPX allows for a smooth integration with SAP HANA, letting you maintain existing backup strategies through SAP HANA Studio. DPX is also one of the “backint for SAP HANA”
• Optimal Performance: The use of Catalogic DPX minimizes impacts on performance, ensuring efficient backups without hindering system operations.
• Monitoring and Management: The Catalogic DPX Master Server UI serves as a centralized hub for monitoring backup or restoration endeavors, providing users with real-time insights.
• Hybrid Landscape Support: Catalogic DPX ensures uniform data protection across both on-premise and cloud setups, making it a versatile solution for varied organizational needs.
• Ease of Installation: The Catalogic DPX Plug-in for SAP HANA can be effortlessly installed and configured, ensuring a hassle-free setup process.

Emboldening SAP HANA Data Security

Securing your SAP HANA data is a top priority. Regularly backing up your data not only keeps it safe but also helps you meet regulatory requirements and ensures that your business operations can continue without data loss. Catalogic DPX provides seamless integration, vigilant monitoring, and unwavering support for your SAP HANA data protection. With SAP HANA at the forefront, Catalogic DPX steps up as your safeguard, keeping your precious data secure.

Ready to embark on the journey of reinforcing your SAP HANA data? Click here to request a Catalogic DPX demo or reach out to us with any questions. Your secure data’s protection is just a step away.

Introduction 

In today’s digital landscape, secure data protection is paramount for businesses. When considering data protection strategies, two key solutions come to the forefront: backup and High Availability (HA). While both play critical roles, understanding their pros and cons is essential for making informed decisions. In this article, we will explore the benefits of backup and HA, as well as their limitations, to help businesses prioritize their data protection needs effectively. 

Backup and HA are both crucial components of a comprehensive secure data protection strategy, although they serve different purposes and cater to different Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). 

Backup plays a vital role in secure data protection by creating copies of data and storing them separately from the primary system. It acts as a safety net, allowing businesses to restore data in the event of data loss, corruption, or system failures. Backups are typically performed at regular intervals, capturing the state of the data at a specific point in time. This makes them particularly useful for recovering from incidents that occurred in the past, such as accidental deletions or data corruption that may go unnoticed for some time. Backup solutions often offer features like data deduplication, encryption, and retention policies, ensuring data integrity and long-term storage.

Pros of Backup 

1. Data Recovery: Backup solutions provide a reliable means to recover data in case of loss or corruption caused by hardware failure, accidental deletion, or malicious attacks. This ensures critical data can be restored, ensuring smooth business operations. 
2. Historical Data: Backups often retain multiple versions of data, enabling businesses to access previous states and restore specific versions when needed. This feature is valuable for recovering from errors, retrieving older data, or meeting compliance requirements. 
3. Cost-effectiveness: Implementing backup solutions is generally more cost-effective compared to high availability systems, as they do not require redundant hardware. Businesses have the flexibility to choose backup strategies that align with their budget while ensuring data protection. 
4. Ransomware Detection and Warning (DPX-specific): DPX offers advanced features like GuardMode, providing real-time detection and warnings for ransomware attacks. This proactive defense mechanism adds an extra layer of security to backups, safeguarding against evolving cyber threats. 
5. Data Archiving: Backup solutions often include data archiving capabilities, allowing organizations to retain data for long-term storage or regulatory compliance purposes. Archiving ensures data integrity and accessibility over extended periods. 

Cons of Backup 

1. Recovery Time: Restoring data from backups can take time, especially for large datasets. The recovery process may involve retrieving data from off-site locations or transferring it over a network, potentially leading to system downtime during the recovery period. 
2. Storage Space: Backups require significant storage space, especially when multiple versions of data are retained. Managing and scaling storage infrastructure to accommodate growing backup needs can be challenging and costly. 

High Availability, on the other hand, focuses on minimizing system downtime and ensuring continuous access to critical services. It involves deploying redundant systems, such as failover clusters or load-balanced servers, which are capable of taking over seamlessly in case of a primary system failure. High Availability solutions are designed to achieve near-zero downtime, allowing businesses to maintain continuous operations and minimize the impact of disruptions. They are typically built with redundancy, fault-tolerance, and failover mechanisms, ensuring that any system failure or maintenance activities can be handled without significant interruptions. 

Pros of High Availability 

1. Minimized Downtime: High availability systems are designed to minimize or eliminate downtime by quickly switching to a redundant system in case of primary system failure. This ensures continuous availability of critical services, reducing the impact of disruptions. 
2. Business Resilience: High availability systems contribute to overall business resilience by enabling seamless continuity of operations, even in the face of failures or disruptions. This resilience helps maintain customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and revenue streams. 
3. Scalability and Performance: High availability systems are often built on scalable architectures that can handle increasing workloads and user demands. They provide robust performance capabilities to support business growth and handle peak loads effectively. 

Cons of High Availability 

1. Cost: High availability systems can be costly to implement and maintain due to the requirement for redundant hardware and complex configurations. Investment in hardware, licensing, and specialized expertise may pose budgetary challenges for some businesses. 
2. Complexity: Setting up and managing high availability systems can be complex, requiring specialized knowledge and skills. Proper configuration, continuous monitoring, and proactive maintenance are necessary to ensure optimal system performance. 
3. Not a Substitute for Backup: While high availability systems protect against downtime, they do not replace the need for backup solutions. Data loss due to accidental deletion, corruption, or cyber-attacks can still occur, necessitating a comprehensive backup strategy. 
4. Limited Data Copies: High availability systems typically maintain a limited number of redundant data copies. If all the copies are compromised or subject to the same failure, there is still a risk of data loss. Backup solutions with multiple copies and off-site storage provide an additional layer of protection. 
5. Resource Utilization: High availability systems require additional hardware and resources to maintain redundancy, which can impact overall system performance. Organizations must carefully consider resource allocation and capacity planning to ensure smooth operations. 

The choice between backup and High Availability depends on the specific RPO and RTO requirements of a business. RPO refers to the acceptable amount of data loss, while RTO represents the desired time it takes to recover from an incident. If a business has stringent RPO and RTO objectives, requiring minimal data loss and near-instantaneous recovery, a HA solution would be more suitable. HA systems offer rapid failover and continuous operations, ensuring minimal downtime and immediate access to services. 

However, for organizations with more flexible RPO and RTO requirements, backup solutions provide a cost-effective approach. Backups allow for more granular recovery options and the ability to restore data from various points in time, enabling businesses to recover from different types of incidents. Backup solutions are also advantageous for long-term data retention, compliance purposes, and safeguarding against scenarios where system-wide failures or simultaneous data corruption occur. 

Conclusion 

When it comes to secure data protection, businesses must evaluate the advantages and limitations of backup and HA solutions. Backup solutions offer data recovery, historical data retention, cost-effectiveness, ransomware detection (like DPX GuardMode), and data archiving. However, they may involve recovery time and require significant storage space. On the other hand, HA minimizes downtime, ensures business resilience, offers scalability and performance benefits. However, it can be costly, complex to manage, not a substitute for backups, maintain limited data copies, and require careful resource utilization. 

To create a comprehensive data protection strategy, businesses should consider integrating both backup and HA solutions, tailoring them to their specific needs and priorities. This approach ensures a multi-layered defense against both system failures and data loss, enabling business continuity, mitigating risks, and safeguarding valuable data assets. 

In the ever-evolving landscape of data protection and enterprise server management, Catalogic DPX continues to pave the way with its advanced features and broad compatibility. With the recent release of Open Enterprise Server (OES) 2023, DPX takes it a step further by integrating seamlessly with this cutting-edge platform. In this blog, we explore how Catalogic DPX provides Micro Focus OES backups, granular OES file restore capabilities and OES ransomware protection while also highlighting its newfound compatibility with OES 2023.

Granular File Restore for Micro Focus OES Backups

Unlike many other backup providers, like Unitrends, who have distanced themselves from OES by removing support for granular OES backups, Catalogic DPX offers an advanced solution for organizations utilizing Micro Focus OES by providing granular file restore capabilities. With this feature, users can easily recover individual files and folders from their backups, eliminating the need for a full system restore. Whether it’s a critical document or a lost file, DPX empowers users with the ability to swiftly restore specific items, ensuring minimal downtime and maximum productivity.

Ransomware Protection with Catalogic DPX

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but ransomware attacks continue to pose a significant threat to organizations’ data integrity and operational continuity. To combat this menace, DPX incorporates robust ransomware protection measures including snapshot immutability, air-gapped backup destinations, and most recently, proactive ransomware scanning through GuardMode. Through these measures, DPX ensures that not only are backups protected from malicious encryption attempts, but also that data in production is not compromised before the data is snapshotted and moved to vStor. This way, in the event of a ransomware incident, organizations can confidently rely on DPX to restore clean, uninfected copies of their data, effectively thwarting the attackers’ objectives.

Integration with OES 2023

In addition to its existing capabilities, Catalogic DPX now extends its support to OES 2023. This integration opens up new avenues for organizations to leverage Catalogic’s advanced features while enjoying the benefits of the latest Micro Focus platform. With DPX seamlessly integrated with OES 2023, organizations can confidently protect their data, restore files at a granular level, and fortify their backups against ransomware threats.

Efficient Backup and Recovery Workflow

Catalogic DPX simplifies the backup and recovery process for Micro Focus OES environments. Administrators can easily configure backup policies, automate backup schedules, and monitor job statuses through a user-friendly interface. Catalogic DPX optimizes the backup workflow, minimizing the impact on system resources and ensuring efficient data protection.

By utilizing DPX’s support for OES 2023 backups, organizations can also enhance data availability and strengthen their business continuity strategies. The seamless integration ensures that critical data on Micro Focus OES is effectively protected and readily recoverable, minimizing potential downtime and enabling uninterrupted operations.

Catalogic DPX for OES 2023

Catalogic DPX brings granular file restore capabilities and ransomware protection to Micro Focus OES backups, empowering organizations to safeguard their data effectively. With the recent integration of DPX with OES 2023, organizations can further leverage its advanced features and extend their data protection capabilities. Whether it’s recovering individual files or fortifying backups against ransomware threats, Catalogic DPX offers a comprehensive solution for Micro Focus OES environments, now enhanced by its compatibility with OES 2023.

Additional Information

If you would like to learn more, please contact us or request a demo.  For additional reading on DPX support of OES, please see:

• Data Protection and Recovery for Micro Focus OES and Groupwise
• Granular File Restore and Ransomware Protection for Micro Focus OES Backups
• Catalogic DPX is the Smart Choice for Micro Focus OES Customers in Education

DPX vPlus is an enterprise-ready, agentless backup and snapshot management solution for Microsoft 365 and virtual environments. It allows you to reliably improve and automate backup performance, automate recovery tests, and significantly save resources, time, and money. Microsoft 365 backups and virtual machines backups can be stored on-premises, on a local file system or share, or can be stored in the cloud using cloud storage. Wasabi backup storage delivers fast to write, low cost, and reliable cloud object storage, that also provides faster speeds than Amazon S3. Wasabi backup storage charges no egress fees, and provides 100% data immutability, so you can be confident that your backup data is tamper-proof. 

This article provides the steps to use Wasabi cloud storage as DPX vPlus backup storage.  

Configuration Pre-Requisites 

• DPX vPlus version 5.0 or higher 
• Active Wasabi account with access to Wasabi console

Reference Architecture Diagram 

Wasabi Configuration 

1. Login to Wasabi console and Click on “Create Bucket” to create a new standard bucket. Please refer to Creating a Wasabi bucket for information to create a bucket. 

2. Create an Access key and Secret key for the root user. Make sure to download the key file in order to retrieve your secret key again. 

DPX vPlus Configuration

Follow the below steps to configure DPX vPlus to use Wasabi backup storage: 

1. Log in to the DPX vPlus web UI 

2. Navigate to the Backup Destinations Tab -> Object Storage. Then click on “Create Backup Destination” and select “Amazon S3 / S3-compatible.”

3. In the Create Backup Destination window, input the name for your backup destination and choose the node configurations as needed.

4. In Amazon S3 / S3-Compatible Settings, provide the information about your bucket 

• API URL – This is the URL for the Wasabi region. Please refer to Service URLs for various Wasabi regions. 
• Backup mode – select your option 
• Bucket name – this is the bucket that was created in section 3 above 
• Region – Region for Wasabi bucket.  Please refer to Service URLs for various Wasabi regions. 

Make sure the flags “Path style access enabled” and “Parallel Download enabled” are enabled. 

5. Input the Access key and Secret key and then click “Save” to save the configuration. 

6. Test the connectivity by selecting the Wasabi destination and clicking “Test Connectivity.”

7. The results can be viewed in the Task Console.

8. Click on Virtual Environments and then Backup SLA’s to create a Backup SLA and protect your Virtual Environments, Containers, Microsoft 365 and Applications using Wasabi backup storage. Configure the settings under “General” tab.  

9. Configure Settings under the Rule tab. Select the Wasabi cloud storage as the destination, define the retention settings, and assign the policy to a schedule. If you have not yet created a schedule, you can assign this policy to a schedule at a later time.

10. If you do not assign the policy to Virtual Machines during creation or want to assign new VMs to an existing Backup Policy, you can do so by clicking on “Virtual Environments” and then “instances.” Select the instance and click “Assign policy” and then select the policy created in step 4.8 above. Click “Save” to save the policy assignment. 

11. Start a backup by selecting the instance and clicking the backup icon.

12. The progress of the backup can be viewed on the task console. 

For any support or setup questions, please get in touch with Catalogic Technical Support at dpsupport@catalogicsoftware.com.

Introduction

A backup strategy in place is essential for protecting your data against a ransomware attack. However, relying solely on backups is not enough to ensure complete protection from continuously more sophisticated risks. 

The thing to remember is that backups can be an effective defense against ransomware only if they are done regularly and stored securely. Regular backups ensure that you have the most recent versions of your data available in case of an attack. Storing backups securely, such as on an offline or off-site location, can prevent the ransomware from accessing and encrypting them. Remember the 3-2-1 rule!

However, there are still some scenarios where backups may not be enough to protect against ransomware. For example:

• If the ransomware can infect and encrypt the backed-up files before you notice the attack. 
• If the backups are not set up correctly or not being tested regularly, which may lead to data loss or the inability to restore the data.  
• If the backup process or systems are themselves compromised.

This is why we’ve decided to enhance the protection against data loss due to ransomware attacks by adding GuardMode, a ransomware detection module specifically designed to further protect your data and backup solution against ransomware.

GuardMode Detection Strategies 

Three fundamental types of ransomware detection allow for a precise and early detection of suspicious activity for your backup and storage admins: 

• Threshold-based ransomware detection is a method of identifying ransomware attacks by monitoring file access patterns and setting predefined thresholds. It works by identifying when ransomware is attempting to encrypt a large number of files quickly or change file extensions 
• Honeypot file-based ransomware detection involves creates fake files that look like real data but are designed to trigger an alert when accessed or modified.
• Blocklist-based ransomware detection is a method of identifying ransomware by comparing file name patterns against a known list of ransomware-specific patterns.

A combination of these three mechanisms provides an effective way for early detection of ransomware, and in combination with a data protection solution like DPX, they significantly enhance the security posture of your team to be more proactive.

Benefits of Ransomware Detection for Backup Solutions 

Avoid Paying Ransom Demands 

First, taking a proactive security posture can help your organization avoid paying ransom demands. If ransomware infects your system and your backups are encrypted, you may have no other option but to pay the ransom to get your data back. However, with GuardMode, you can prevent the attack from encrypting your backups, and you can restore your data from a clean backup copy. 

Minimize Downtime and Decrease Recovery Time 

Another advantage of ransomware detection in backup solutions is that it can minimize downtime. Ransomware attacks can cause significant downtime, which can result in lost revenue and productivity. With GuardMode ransomware detection, you can quickly identify and isolate infected systems, preventing the malware from spreading to other systems and minimizing the time it takes to recover from a ransomware attack. This is because you can get early notification to take action quickly to isolate the affected systems and restore data from backups. 

Improve Overall Cybersecurity 

The early detection mechanisms of GuardMode in combination with REST APIs and syslog integration helps your backup and storage teams improve your overall cybersecurity posture. By implementing measures to detect ransomware and ransomware-like attacks, you can enhance your existing security posture and you’re well equipped for automating actions to take upon detection like: 

• Making shares read-only instantaneously 
• Blocking suspiciously behaving accounts 
• Invoking immediate snapshot/backup on the affected system

It also important to take additional steps to protect against ransomware, such as implementing strong cybersecurity measures and training employees on how to recognize and avoid ransomware using antivirus and anti-malware software. 

Why You Need to Add GuardMode Today

Ransomware attacks can cause significant damage to your business. Having a reliable backup solution is crucial to be able to recover data and systems, but backup solution are not immune to ransomware attacks. Ransomware can encrypt files on source systems before they are backed up, and if unnoticed, making them useless for recovery in the event of a data loss. This is where ransomware detection offered by GuardMode comes in handy. Providing early detection of ransomware attacks allows you to take immediate action to limit the spread and prevent the attack from encrypting your files unnoticed before they are backed up.

Contact us to learn more about GuardMode and how it can seamlessly integrate with your existing  infrastructure and enhance your security posture. We can demonstrate GuardMode in action, and help you integrate and fine-tune GuardMode to fully utilize its potential using your existing infrastructure.

We are pleased to announce the release of Catalogic DPX 4.9, where we continue to build upon our commitment to providing one of the most cyber resilient data protection and backup coverage matrices for private, public, and hybrid-cloud environments. This release adds to our industry leading ransomware recovery and cyber resilience features by building on the DPX GuardMode for Windows capability made available in DPX 4.8.1.

GuardMode provides proactive monitoring for early detection and notification of suspicious activity along with identifying and enabling the recovery of any affected data. Before DPX 4.9, this feature was limited to Windows, but DPX 4.9 now offers GuardMode for Linux servers and Samba shares.  In addition, backup administrators can now benefit from increased quality of alerts, where GuardMode measures the level of file entropy and compares known magic signatures on files suspected to be impacted. GuardMode uses active, live forensic techniques instead of analyzing backup data that lags security incidents by several hours, days, and even weeks.

DPX 4.9 also delivered improvements to the web-based HTML UI, including support for Block Backup, Restore, and support for archival of those block-based backups. We also added several improvements to different DPX services, including reporting and event service monitoring.

We have also added several improvements to the use of DPX vStor in this release. This includes the ability to archive backup copies from a replicated vStor, multi-factor authentication, and an easier way to install vStor on a physical server.

And finally, DPX 4.9 includes many general improvements to existing DPX features. All new features of our DPX 4.9 product are listed below:

DPX Cyber Resilience

• GuardMode for Linux

Adds a Linux ransomware detection agent with the ability to detect and notify an administrator of possible suspicious activity on the host. This is an upgrade to the already present Windows agent that adds a layer of ransomware detection and alerting to the DPX enterprise.

• Encrypted Files Detection and Encryption Tracking

Adds an agent feature that detects encrypted files and tracks the encryption process to provide a list of affected files through a REST API. This allows administrators to improve their understanding of the infection scope as well as provides a list of affected files to restore.

• Syslog Support

Adds syslog as a notification target for notifications.  This allows administrators to plug in GuardMode agent notifications into their existing security event collection workflows (for example, into a SIEM solution.)

DPX Services

• Support for Block Backup and Restore in HTML UI

Adds the option of scheduling Block Backups and all corresponding restore options (File Restore, Instant Access Mapping, Backup Virtualization, Application) to HTML UI.  Now, the user can run block backup and restore workloads without relying on the Java GUI by using the HTML UI or REST API, which is faster and opens up new automation or integrations possibility.

• Support for Double Protection for Block Backup

Adds option of Double Protection in the HTML UI. The Administrator can now configure Double Protection (Archiving) via the HTML UI more responsively and intuitively. REST APIs are available for this feature as well.

• Reporting Improvements

Adds the ability to generate PDF versions of the reports, scheduling of reports, and the option to send them via email. Also introduces a new report for 24-hour job status overview.

• Event Service Improvements

Adds more Master Server events to be received by the DPX event service. This allows an administrator to configure granular email notifications for more types of events from DPX services, including backup jobs, status changes and more.

• Appliance Operating System Update to Alma Linux 8.7

Migrated the appliance operating system to a downstream Linux distribution from Red Hat and upgraded to a current release.

DPX Core 

• Archive from Alternate/Replicated DPX vStor

Adds the ability to archive from a replicated vStor.  This allows the Administrator the flexibility to configure backup to a primary DPX vStor at a branch office then replicate to a central site vStor, and to also archive data from the secondary vStor to Cloud/Tape/DiskDirectory, and then restore to any location.

• Microsoft Azure Blob and Alibaba Object Storage support

Adds Microsoft Azure Blob and Alibaba Object Storage support as Archive/NDMP cloud targets.

• Catalog Condense Improvements

Catalog Condense now cleans up Cloud and DiskDirectory storage.

• Integrating DPX Core Services to Linux systemd Service Manager

Uses systemd to manage cmagent/nibbler services on RedHat/CentOS 7.6+ and SUSE 12+.

• Adding New Platforms for Agentless VMware Backup Proxies

Support RHEL, CentOS, OEL, and AlmaLinux 8.0~8.3 as proxy nodes for Agentless VMware backup.

• New BMR ISO for Linux kernel v4.18

New Linux BMR ISO to support Linux kernel v4.18.

DPX vStor – Software-Defined Backup Appliance

• Addition of MFA

Adds a Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to both UI and console access.

• Password Reset Improvements

Adds the ability to reset password on HTML UI.

• Physical Installation ISO

Creates ISO installation image that can be used to install vStor on physical appliances.

Summary

For further information on DPX 4.9, see the What’s New in DPX 4.9 document and other resources on the DPX products page. Customers with support can access more detailed information in the release notes on the Support page.  For more information on Microsoft 365 and Open VM backups, please see DPX vPlus.

Whether it is ransomware attacks, human error or IT outages, every business needs an affordable and reliable data protection solution like Catalogic DPX to backup and instantly recover data to ensure business continuity. Have a question or want a live demo? Contact us today!