Frequently Asked Questions
Sonasoft answers your questions. Here you will find support on the most
frequently asked questions about our products and services.
1. How long have you been in business?
Sonasoft was founded in 2002 and has been in business for the past five years.
2. How do you work with existing installations?
Sonasoft is a stand-alone turnkey solution and it provides very rich
functions and features. It will work well with existing installations.
But we need to do a thorough analysis of the existing environment at a
customer site before we can say how well it will work with existing
installations.
3. What is your targeted customer base?
Sonasoft's product can be used for any type of company; small, medium
or large. The solution will help to centralize the management of all
the servers and provide a unified view of all the things happening in
different servers.
4. How does this actually work?
Target Servers are connected to a dedicated backup server on the local
LAN or over the WAN. These target servers are registered with the
backup server and a disaster backup plan is created using SonaSafe web
interface. Backups and catalog information are stored on the dedicated
backup server by SonaSafe agent using built-in intelligence capability.
In case of a disaster or a single database failure, recovery occurs
just with a click of a button.
5. Can this work with multiple servers?
Absolutely. There is no limit on the number of servers that can be
backed up to the dedicated backup server. The number of servers that
can be backed up to the backup server depends on the total number of
servers, total size of all the databases, the storage capacity on the
backup server and network traffic.
6. Will I lose any transactions if I use your software to protect my data?
No. For example, let us assume a customer takes a full database backup
once a day, differential backup every 6 hours and transactional backup
every 15 minutes. Let us say a transactional backup was taken at 4 PM
and the next one is going to be taken at 4:15 PM. Let us say that the
system crashed at 4:12 PM. As long as the physical files are
accessible, the system will automatically apply the tail log for the
last 12 minutes and recover the database to the point of failure
without a single minute of data loss.
7. What capacity do I need if I have 500 Gigabytes of data?
We are consistently achieving 80-85% compression. With 80% compression
the data will get compressed to 100 Gigabytes and if we have a 0.5TB backup
server, then one can store up to 3 to 4 backups on the dedicated backup
server.
8. Will the application affect our target servers?
No. SonaSafe agent, which runs on the target SQL Servers, takes about
15MB of memory and 2-3% of CPU. Network speed depends upon how many
databases are being backed up concurrently and how big they are. Also,
on the fly compression improves the transfer of data drastically.
9. How much disk space do I need if I use the compression option?
Compression is done on the fly with minimal or no impact on the target server. Hence there is no need for additional disk space.
10. Does your application support IP SAN ( iSCSI )?
Yes. The SonaSafe application supports the Microsoft iSCSI Software
Initiator package. Install it on the SonaSafe application and you're
ready to go. Please check with your storage vendor to ensure that the
hardware you have chosen has received the Designed for Windows Logo
from Microsoft. Using qualified iSCSI hardware ensures support from
Microsoft for your iSCSI deployment.
11. What type of hardware do I need for the Sonasoft product?
SonaSafe requires a dedicated server. The server can be purchased from
DELL, IBM, HP or any hardware manufacturer. Contact Sonasoft if you
have any questions about the type of configuration need to support your
environment.
12. There are a lot of software packages that seem to offer what
yours does, what better value does this software offer customers?
The Return on Value (ROV) one can get with Sonasoft solution is
unmatched by any other solution out in the market today. In case of a
disaster, with other solutions, it will take days if not weeks to
achieve total recovery. With Sonasoft's solution, one can achieve
Point-Click Recovery® or rapid recovery to the point of failure or a
point in time automatically without any data loss. Sonasoft gives your
DBA or Admin total control and your company a standardized process.
Businesses of all sizes are enjoying the value Sonasoft adds to their
enterprise.
