CA XOsoft™ CDP Solo (formerly CA XOsoft Enterprise Rewinder) Product Suite for Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

CA XOsoft CDP Solo is a continuous data protection solution that helps you recover from data corruption caused by viruses, software errors and user errors by giving you the ability to rewind your data back in time to a point before the corruption happened. With software agents installed on application servers throughout your datacenter and a central management GUI console, CA XOsoft CDP Solo allows you to configure, monitor, manage, and perform recovery on all of your Exchange, SQL, Oracle, file and other application servers from a single console.

When the application data on a server becomes corrupted, CA XOsoft CDP Solo alerts you through the central GUI, by email, or through system logs. The CA XOsoft CDP Solo data recovery software then allows you to rewind individual files, individual databases or the entire protected dataset to any point in the past, before the corruption occurred, quickly and easily, regardless of the total size of the data. For supported applications, CA XOsoft CDP Solo also displays backup events and significant application-specific events, such as checkpoints or log rotations, points in time at which the database is known to be in a consistent state.

Continuous data protection (CDP) has emerged as one of the leading growth areas of data protection and data recovery software. CDP is the ability to recover data not just to certain isolated previous states captured, for example, in a daily or weekly backup or snapshot, but to recover the data back to any point in time. CA XOsoft pioneered the development of true, continuous CDP in 2002 as an integrated capability in the CA XOsoft Replication (formerly CA XOsoft WANSync) data replication product. CA XOsoft CDP Solo provides this same capability in the form of host-based software agents managed from a central console, data recovery software that works with your existing hardware and software to provide fast recovery and minimal data loss.

Screenshot which shows the ease of recovering data to any point in time.
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CA XOsoft CDP Solo — A Complete Data Recovery and Data Protection Solution

CA XOsoft CDP Solo is a highly cost-effective continuous data protection (CDP) solution that supplements your backup infrastructure to enable very rapid recovery, independent of data size, and the absolute minimum possible data loss after a corruption event, without the need for special-purpose appliances.

CA XOsoft CDP Solo provides:

• Host-based software agents that monitor all application data changes and record the information required to rewind the data to any point in the past
• Automatic monitoring of your production application and the state of application services allows immediate notification of problems via email, GUI console and system logs
• Centralized GUI management console to configure, monitor, manage and recover servers across the enterprise
• Tailored application support for Exchange, Oracle, SQL Server
• File support for file servers and other applications.
• Administrator-defined bookmarks to mark known states allow rapid back-out of failed software installations and configuration changes
• Integrates with existing hardware and software
• Non-disruptive installation provides immediate protection with no downtime

Manage your entire datacenter from a single GUI console

Other Resources

Learn more about our data protection solution by downloading a trial evaluation of our production data recovery software* or contact us for information related to your specific continuous data protection needs.

Our white paper, Continuous Data Protection, will help you further research the advantages of continuous data protection (CDP) solutions.

Continuous data protection (CDP) is available as part of our CA XOsoft Replication disaster recovery and CA XOsoft High Availability (formerly CA XOsoft WANSyncHA) solutions as well.

Frequently Asked Question

• What is the difference between the usage of the "rewind technology" in CA XOsoft Replication vs. CA XOsoft CDP Solo?

Key Benefits of Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

The CA XOsoft CDP Solo data protection solution delivers significant benefits that build a critical additional layer of protection into your backup and recovery systems, yield dramatically faster time to recovery, and reduce data loss to an absolute minimum, all in a highly cost-effective solution that sets the standard for ease of use and management. Major benefits of the CA XOsoft CDP Solo data recovery software solution include:

Covers Gaps in Your Current Data Protection Solution and Reduces Data Loss

Reliably protecting your organization's most critical data isn't about finding a single best solution. It is about building up layers of protection that cover the entire range of potential threats. Backups are obviously the foundation on which your data protection solution is built. Snapshots and disk-based backups provide valuable additional layers of protection. But all of these solutions leave significant gaps in protection and the potential to lose hours of critical information. CA XOsoft CDP Solo can fill in this gap and provide support for the best possible recovery point objective (RPO) — the point just before the corruption occurred.

• Recovery to the time just prior to a corruption keeps data loss to an absolute minimum.
• CA XOsoft CDP Solo identifies and records significant application-specific events such as checkpoints and log file rotations, allowing the administrator to rewind corrupted databases precisely to the consistent state just before corruption occurred.
• Continuous data protection (CDP) covers the times between backups and snapshots.
• Easily integrates with industry standard backup or snapshot-based solutions to provide a complementary solution.
• Rewind of individual files recovers only the data corrupted without losing other changes.

CA XOsoft CDP Solo Data Recovery Software Speeds Time to Recovery

For business critical applications and data, keeping data loss to a minimum is important, but it is just as important to get back up fast. CA XOsoft CDP Solo can reduce the time required to recover your data and get back to work from hours or even days to minutes.

• The process of restoration depends only on the volume of changes since corruption occurred, not on the total data size. Databases from megabytes to terabytes can be restored in just minutes.
• Storage of changes on host-accessible storage means no time is lost loading data from backup.
• Managing recovery from the same, centralized management console that you use to monitor operations means no time is lost locating (and remembering how to use) special tools and utilities.
• Restricting rewind to the individual files affected speeds recovery even more.

CA XOsoft CDP Solo Cost-Effective Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for Increased Productivity

The last thing your IT organization needs is another drain on your administrators' time. CA XOsoft CDP Solo effectively automates the recovery process to dramatically reduce both complexity and time. In addition, CA XOsoft software sets the standard for simplicity and ease of use.

• Centralized, but flexible GUI console allows all scenarios of all types throughout the enterprise to be easily monitored and managed by a single administrator, or to be distributed — you can tailor to your organization's needs.
• Application-aware data recovery software for Microsoft Exchange, SQL, and Oracle supports recovery to a well-defined state for the application.
• Flexible configuration of CA XOsoft CDP Solo journal files ensures optimal use of resources — configure to cover a specific amount of time or pre-set journal size.
• Software solution requires no new infrastructure investment — integrates with standard backup solutions and leverages IT investments by making full use of existing hardware and software, including MSCS clusters.
• "Soft" installation requires no system reboot or application service restart. Install and enable full protection without any downtime.

Complete Data Recovery and Data Protection Solution for Critical Applications

CA XOsoft CDP Solo comprises a comprehensive suite of data recovery solutions, precisely tailored to industry standard application and database servers, including:

• CA XOsoft CDP Solo Option for Exchange — the only data recovery software solution that provides complete and rapid recovery from data corruption* for Microsoft Exchange servers.
• CA XOsoft CDP Solo Option for SQL — the fastest and most comprehensive data recovery software solution for Microsoft SQL
• CA XOsoft CDP Solo Option for Oracle — a data protection solution that provides guaranteed protection against corruptions on Oracle database servers.
• CA XOsoft CDP Solo Option for File Server — data protection solution for quick and effortless recovery data corruption* for file servers and other applications.
• Integration Solutions — CA XOsoft's state-of-the-art Rewind™ technology allows the capture of backup start and stop events, and generates appropriate internal notifications and script-based actions.

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CA XOsoft CDP Solo for True Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

Continuous data protection is a powerful new technology that supplements traditional backup to provide the ability to recover more recent data more quickly than was ever possible before.

Traditional backup freezes the state of a set of data at a specific single point in the past, say 1 AM and provides the ability to return the backed-up system to that precise past state. Replication, on the other hand, tracks the data as it changes. It provides the ability to return the system to the state that existed just prior to the point where the system crashes or is brought to a halt.

Continuous data protection offers the best of both worlds. Like replication, it continuously tracks changes in the data. However, instead of simply copying the changes to a replica, it records a local rewind journal of the operations required to undo the changes that are taking place. Should recovery be required, the continuous data protection and recovery solution simply plays the undo operations backward to any desired point in the past that is recorded in the journal, just like performing a sequence of undo operations in Microsoft Word.

CA XOsoft CDP Solo agents provide protection that is tailored and optimized for specific application servers, including Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange 2000/2003, Oracle, network file servers, and others. It is engineered to provide efficient continuous data protection and recovery capability in a way that integrates well with your environment, provides efficient means of recovery, and ensures the integrity of any recovered data.

Imagine, for example, that a virus corrupts one of the storage groups in your Exchange server. With traditional backup, the database must be restored to the time of the last backup, which means that all the data between, say, 1am and 4pm the following day, when the corruption occurred, may be lost.

With CA XOsoft CDP Solo, it is necessary only to rewind the individual storage group file or even a single database within it to a time just prior to the corruption.

The idea behind the rewind technology that powers CA XOsoft CDP Solo is quite simple. A standard driver in the host operating system monitors activity on any files that are configured for continuous data protection (CDP) and any operation that changes the data triggers recording of the specific operation required to undo what was done. For example, if an operation writes 8K bytes to the end of a file, CA XOsoft CDP Solo will record an operation to "unwrite" the same section, restoring the original data, and similarly for every other kind of operation.

Download a trial evaluation version of CA XOsoft's data protection solution and data recovery software.*

CA XOsoft CDP Solo Continuous Data Protection (CDP) supported configurations.

Our white paper, Continuous Data Protection, will help you further research the advantages of continuous data protection (CDP) solutions. Continuous data protection (CDP) is available as part of our CA XOsoft Replication and CA XOsoft High Availability solutions as well. Contact us for more information related to your specific continuous data protection needs.

*Please note that CA XOsoft CDP Solo must be installed prior to a data corruption incident in order for rewind and recovery to be carried out. CA XOsoft CDP Solo cannot be used to recover files or databases that were damaged or corrupted before installation.