BE 15 - Data Recovery Service

Business Experiment BE15 realises a Data Recovery Service (DRS) application. The DRS is currently aimed at Small to Medium Enterprises (SME's) and it allows them to store and retrieve critical company data in a safe and easy manner. The storage location for the backup consists of a peer-network of these same SME's so that this project is also a unique community experiment. Added to the peer-grid is a Trusted Third Party that provides the necessary security guarantees (Rabobank), plus central facilities of the hosting Grid provider (Almere Grid). LogicaCMG is responsible for the application development and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam has developed the underlying business models.
The application can be demonstrated to anyone interested.

Fact Sheet

Business objective

The business objective of the experiment is to evaluate the commercial application possibilities of grid technology for an automatic on-line backup system and to assess adoption readiness in the SME market.

Technical objective

The technical objective is to use grid technology in a data backup/recovery service. Clients will not be aware of the backup solution and providers of storage will not be aware of the storage supply. Clients of storage and Suppliers of storage can be one and the same (identical entities).
The experiment will explore the use of Grid technology for the back-up recovery service. Current solutions are technically mostly client server based. DataGrid technology, combined with peer to peer techniques can result in a more flexible and robust solution. We will implement a Desktop Grid based solution. Data from one company are broken up in small encrypted parts that are stored randomly and redundant on a large number of other companies PC's. A company's desktop system will hence both be used as client system from which vital data are stored on the Grid, and as a Grid "storage peer" that stores encrypted data from other PC's.