Open-File Backup & App. Consistent Snapshots Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service Introduced 2002 –VSS Broadly Adopted by 3 rd Party Backup Vendors –Enables high-performance, application-consistent snapshots and open-file backup Linux –No VSS Equivalent –Snapshots usually considered special capability supported by network attached storage (e.g. NetApp, EMC) –Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) snapshots has limited adoption –LVM snapshots only possible on a minority of Linux servers in practice

Linux LVM Snapshots Limited Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) can create snapshots –Limited adoption by 3 rd -Part Backup Vendors –All partitions and volumes must be formatted as LVM during server install to use LVM snapshots –LVM deployed in < 50% of Linux Servers –Most servers do not use LVM on the critical “root” file system –Even if LVM is deployed dedicated snapshot storage must be deployed –Most servers with LVM do not have available dedicated snapshot storage –LVM snapshots create significant negative performance impact while maintaining snapshots –LVM deployments in servers is even less common in Linux Virtual Machines where file system is often formatted directly on to virtual disk

Server Open File Backup / Snapshots Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Application Consistent Broadly Deployed Used by 3 rd -Party Backup Applications Good Performance Requires No Pre-Allocation or Dedicated Storage Uses Available Disk Space for Snapshot Storage Linux No VSS Equivalent Snapshots typically only on specialized hardware LVM Snapshots Not Typically Available

R1Soft Universal Linux SnapShot R1Soft Proprietary Linux Snapshot Driver –Open file backup and application-consistent snapshots –Eliminates LVM pre-requisite –Requires no Pre-Allocation or Pre-Configuration of Storage –Works with any server-based file system, external block- based storage or unified storage (iSCSI + NAS) –Performance enhancements for popular Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, and ReiserFS file systems –Supports Most 2.4 and 2.6 Linux Kernels –Install without rebooting server –Supports Most Linux File Systems (XFS, RH GFS, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, ReiserFS, JFS, etc) –Works on most H/A, shared, and clustered storage

R1Soft Linux Application Snapshots Consistent Application Backups –Simple API for software backup vendors –Integrate into application / database backups E.g.: MySQL, Oracle, mail servers, etc –Command Line Utility Sample Implementation Available for immediate OEM to any backup software vendor