The BLM Archiver offers policy-based file archiving and is the centerpiece of Asigra’s BLM solution, managing archiving and restoration of data from Asigra Televaulting backup sessions for single or multiple company locations. According to Eran Farajun, executive vice president of Asigra, the BLM Archiver serves two key functions: it frees up storage capacity used by stale files on DS-Systems storage, reducing the cost of inactive files on-line, and it creates restorable point-in-time copies of backup sets for historical reference to meet compliance objectives. Stale files are defined as files that are unlikely to ever be needed for restoration, but are still required to be protected. The BLM Archiver stages archive requests from multiple locations and then consolidates the data into a single, multi-tiered archive, assigning data to the most cost-effective storage tier based on policy-based criteria, such as applications and recovery time objectives.

In addition to consolidating the data archives and eliminating the cost of acquiring and maintaining archival storage hardware at each location, Asigra BLM shrinks the size of the archive by monitoring and eliminating duplicate backup files.

Asigra BLM comprehensively manages the backup period of the data lifecycle, governing the rules for when data is archived and how the data is indexed for long-term archiving and automated searching and restoration while ensuring compliant data destruction. All data contained in the BLM Archive is self-contained, enabling the BLM Archiver to respond to a restore request with a restorable package containing the requested data.

Asigra BLM works with any file systems and any storage architecture, including DAS, NAS and SAN. Asigra provides the same platform and application support for its BLM solutions as Televaulting for Enterprises 6.0, with database backup support for Oracle 10g under Linux and Windows, PostgreSQL 8.0 support on Linux and Solaris, and hot DB2 backup, as well as client and host backup on VMware and native backup support for Mac OS X. Additionally, Asigra BLM integrates with third-party HSM products, such as ADIC StorNext, Legato DiskXtender, Sun StorEdgeSAM-FS, Tivoli Storage Manager and Veritas HSM. Asigra Backup Lifecycle Management for Televaulting Version 6.0 is currently available with a price of US$2,500 per terabyte of data stored in the BLM Archive.