Kroll Ontrack Develops Custom Solutions to Recover Data

Kroll Ontrack, Inc. announced advancements in recovering data from enterprise storage systems, specifically EMC Isilon, CommVault Simpana, Infortrend EonStor and HP EVA.

With nearly two-thirds of organizations experiencing unplanned system downtime or data loss in 2014 according to an EMC survey, and 71% not confident they can recover systems/data to meet business needs*, Kroll Ontrack’s developed technologies address complex data recovery in the evolving enterprise storage landscape.

“With hardware technologies progressing at warp speed and every vendor establishing its own proprietary method of storing data, we’re seeing that most enterprise failures resulting in data loss require a custom recovery solution,” says Todd Johnson, VP, data and storage technologies, Kroll. “Add to that the sheer volume of data streaming through these enormously intricate systems, and the complexity of recovery increases. In such nuanced environments, the recovery process is rooted in thoughtfully assessing the failure, analyzing and deciphering proprietary storage designs, rebuilding file systems and developing solutions to restore critical data.“

Kroll Ontrack achieved success developing custom solutions for several configurations:

• EMC Isilon IQ 6000x: A large US pharmaceutical company experienced the loss of over four million business-critical files from their EMC Isilon storage system when moving critical R&D data within the system. Isilon systems are specialized and designed for managing big data through a file system (OneFS). Kroll Ontrack, in collaboration with EMC, developed a set of proprietary data recovery tools to overcome data loss in an EMC Isilon storage system. These tools can be used to reduce downtime and increase the success rate of data recovery on an EMC Isilon system. Case study.
• CommVault Media Server and Simpana 9/ Dell MD1200: A US company lost access to more than 230 million crucial files due to a corrupt media agent database file on their Media Server. Kroll Ontrack software developers and data recovery engineers created a solution for rebuilding the VTL array to reconstruct the data mapping. This set of tools will reduce the time needed to recover from CommVault-based. Case study.
  
• Infortrend EonStor RAID: A large UK federal organization learned the hard way that even RAID-6 arrays, known for their reliability, are not 100% impervious to hardware failure. Almost 24TB of confidential data were lost when two HDDs failed. The drives were replaced, but the system failed to rebuild, leaving the data inaccessible. Each RAID controller uses algorithms and parity to create a RAID-6 configuration. Kroll Ontrack engineers were able to decipher the complex RAID-6 algorithm used by the hardware producer with a software toolset. This toolset enabled a recovery from the RAID-6 and can be used to aid in the recovery of data across all RAID-6 configurations. Case study.
  
• HP StorageWorks EVA 6000: A flooded data center left a client’s servers and storage systems partially submerged in water causing severe damage. At the center of the damage was a HP StorageWorks EVA (Enterprise Virtual Array) 6000 containing important business-critical SQL database files as well as sensitive employee information. The complex RAID mapping system distributes data among multiple drives and the proprietary file system structure required substantial analysis and reverse engineering to decipher. Kroll’s R&D team and its software developers created tools to extract the data, recovering 86% of their most critical data. Case study.

“While every data loss situation has its own unique identity, the solutions we develop build technical knowledge that can be applied across the enterprise,” says Johnson. “Ultimately that leads to faster, more efficient solutions when systems fail or human error leads to data loss.“

*EMC Global Data Protection Index “Global Key Results & Findings“