
Netswap is a data center appliance created by Highly Reliable Systems that connects to your cloud storage service and provides autonomous back up services. Highly Reliable mentions that their new NetSwap family of NAS appliances are currently for sale and the backup appliance can be configured to work with Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, DreamHost Dream Cloud and DropBox.
NetSwap operates on the idea that although cloud storage is fairly reliable when all things are taken into account, some organizations may require an on-site mirror of all their cloud hosted data. NetSwap achieves this by allowing organizations to fail over to the NetSwap device incase of an internet outage. The NetSwap appliance is configured to work bi-directionally. This allows organizations to use the server as a primary storage device. Once network connections are restored, the appliance will the sync the new versions of files into your cloud automatically. This ensures that you have consistent data across your organization even the physical connection to your cloud is not there.
Tom Hoops, CTO of Highly Reliable, explained why some organizations would need NetSwap. Hoops said, “It makes sense for businesses with large amounts of data in the Cloud to retain a local copy for both safety and high speed access. Some customers worry about compliance and long term data retention for HIPAA, SOX, and other laws.” Hoops continues, “Complying with discovery requests during lawsuits is made much easier with a local copy of the data and our appliance insures those copies are constantly updated, even when multiple sources are involved. The reverse Cloud backup features of the NetSwap backup appliance were designed to address all these issues with minimal intervention from IT”
Hoops goes on to say that some businesses have been completely destroyed by hackers, bugs and accidents. If those organizations had a NetSwap appliance on site, some of those businesses may still be around today.