EMC RepliStor SMB Edition

EMC Insignia RepliStor is aimed at the real-time Windows backup market. EMC inherited the product when it acquired Legato and the current version is 6.1.1. It works by allowing you to create source directories on a server and have them replicated to another machine. As changes occur to the files in the source directory the target directory is updated.

The software is supplied with an installation manual, an administrator's guide and a small case containing a CD and your licence code.

Installing the software is simple. You can stick the CD in the machine, copy the files to an installation directory or configure the product for network installation. As well as being able to handle any files on a computer, there are specific versions to deal with SQL Server and Exchange Server. These optimised versions deal with the open file handles problem so that you don't get partially replicated files that are corrupt when you need them.

Once you have decided what you are installing, you simply click on the product installer and let it run. You will be prompted for your license key (more on that later) and to choose where you want the files stored. If you attempt to use the licence key twice, it will detect the duplicate and refuse to talk to that machine. You should also be aware that the license code is case sensitive, something we couldn't find mentioned anywhere in the documentation.

By default, it assumes you are going to store logs and everything in the current user Documents and Settings folders. Take the time to change the target location for files to a location with sufficient long-term disk space. The product can be configured to report itself to Active Directory, a good thing on a medium sized network as you can then find and administer all the servers centrally. You can install both the client and the server but you only need the server if you are going to copy files to or from the machine in question. The default is both and only the server component needs a license key.

After installation you do not need to do a reboot but when you uninstall, you will need to reboot. If this is the first copy of RepliStor you have installed, when you start it up you will only see this machine listed in the Site column. As you install other machines, they will all begin to appear in the Site column but you will need to "attach" to them in order to work with them.

The notion of source and target can get a little confusing, especially when you are trying to setup the replication. RepliStor uses the phrase Specification to identify the replication configuration.

Let's say we have ServerA and ServerB. I want to hold all files on ServerB. In order to create a specification I first connect to ServerA. This allows me to see all the drives and folders on ServerA. I go through the directory structure clicking on the directory(s) that I want to replicate. If you chose more than a single directory, you will need to create a description for this specification. Once that is done, I decide where the target is (ServerB).

It is important to get this right because you can only configure the files to be replicated from the server that they are stored on. This is about pushing the files to the target not pulling them across.

Having selected the items to be replicated and decided upon the target server you can then further refine the configuration. The first thing to do is configure the Mirroring options. This deals with maintaining the security information, defragmenting the files when they arrive on the target and how they are protected. You can decide whether to use the Microsoft Security ID (SID) information to maintain access security or user name. Importantly, to stop files that are no longer required and which should have been backed up, you can set a deletion timeframe for files. If they haven't been used for a given number of day, they will be removed.

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