infoTECH Feature

November 05, 2008

R1Soft to Release Beta Version of Linux Hot Copy

By Nitya Prashant
R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies, has announced that a free beta version of Hot Copy for Linux will be available in late November. Hot Copy is a new command line utility that takes instant, readable and writable snapshots of disks or volumes on any Linux server, company sources said.
Since Hot Copy does not use Logical Volume Management (LVM), it can work on any Linux system and block device without changing storage configuration and on limited free drive space. Listing its features, official sources said that it creates a point-in-time snapshot of the disk while the system is running, without interrupting applications. With Hot Copy, point-in-time snapshots can be added to legacy backup applications like tar and rsync as well.
Hot Copy offers consistent point-in-time snapshot of the disk, irrespective of how busy the system is. With Hot Copy, Linux administrators can take a snapshot before making a big server change. In case the change creates problems, they have an instant backup copy of everything before the change was made. Hot Copy can also be used to run file system check utilities while the system is online. Usually a server would have to be shutdown to safely run check disk.
David Wartell, vice president of R1Soft, pointed out that Hot Copy will work with a Linux server much like Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) works with Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows.
Wartell added that LVM was not flexible enough, since most servers don't run LVM and if they did run it, LVM volumes had to be configured ahead of time with spare disk space. LVM requires dedicated Volume Group space to maintain the snapshot. 
Hot Copy now offers a better alternative to LVM for Linux snapshots.
 “Linux server admins need a simple command that allows snapshots on any Linux server at any time. This is what Hot Copy does. After installing the Hot Copy RPM or .deb package it's one simple hcp command and they have an instant point-in-time snapshot on any Linux disk,” Wartell said,
Company sources said that Hot Copy requires no dedicated storage device since it has the ability to store changed data on the unused portion of existing drives. System administrators can choose to specify an alternate device with more space for hot copy to use as a changed block store.  The Hot Copy snapshot device can also be mounted as it uses space without interrupting the running server.
When the system administrator makes block level changes to the hard disk, Hot Copy makes a backup copy of only the changed blocks rather than replicating the entire drive. These changed blocks are then efficiently stored in the unused space on the hard disk.
For those interested in downloading Hot Copy before the general release date, R1Soft offers Pre-registration.
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Fixed Service Strategies for Mobile Network Operators, brought to you by Comverse (News - Alert).

Nitya Prashant is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Nitya's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Michelle Robart
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