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The availability and protection of data can be effectively described in terms of a continuum:
At the beginning of the continuum sits high availability. This requirement is usually satisfied by redundancy and fault tolerant designs. The goal here is continuous availability and the avoidance of downtime by the use of redundant components and services.
Further along the continuum lie the data recovery approaches in order of decreasing timeliness. These solutions typically include point-in-time snapshots for fast recovery, followed by replication and, finally, backup to tape or a virtual tape library.
The following diagram illustrates how the core components of the PowerScale data protection portfolio align with the notion of an availability and protection continuum and associated recovery objectives.
The recovery time objective (RTO) of a snapshot can be very small and the recovery point objective (RPO) is also highly flexible with the use of rich policies and granular schedules.