eFolder Replibit Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Technology Questions

• Why should a MSP choose Replibit?
  • A MSP should choose Replibit for the following reasons:
    • If they are dissatisfied with their current BDR vendor
    • If they need a BDR solution for offsite backups and/or always-on business continuity
    • If they are paying too much, need more flexibility, or need a better ConnectWise integration for their BDR solution
    • If they need to decrease storage requirements, decrease data corruption, or decrease management time and stress
    • If they need instant virtualization, verified backups, and true retention
  • Does eFolder sell hardware for Replibit?
    • Yes  Click here to find out more about our hardware.

• What does eFolder sell exactly?
  • eFolder sells a cloud and software license bundle, Replibit appliance hardware, a cloud storage license, a software license, and the eFolder Continuity Cloud environment.

• When should a MSP contact eFolder to provision another vault?
  • When the current vault usage goes above 20 protected systems, the MSP should contact eFolder Technical Support to determine if new vaults need to be provisioned.

• Does Replibit support dissimilar hardware restore?
  • Yes, with Replibit a MSP can restore from bare metal to dissimilar hardware at wire speeds.

• Why is eFolder’s cloud best able to support Replibit?
  • Over the last decade, eFolder has designed and perfected a custom storage and compute cloud architecture. This allows us to provide high-IOPS, cost-effective storage that maintains write-ordering guarantees, and safe write caching semantics (these are critical for the safe operation of ZFS— the file system used by Replibit). This gives eFolder a robust and reliable cloud that is able to support Replibit’s software with ease.

• Can eFolder BDR for Replibit backup and/or virtualize UEFI-based systems?
  • Yes.

• Do the agents require a GB interface connection?
  • Agents do not require a gigabit connection; however, if a MSP has a 100 megabit network and many agents, then any image-based backup will be slowed down (this is not specific to Replibit).

• Is on-vault virtualization or virtualization verification supported?
  • Neither on-vault virtualization nor virtualization verification is supported.

• Why is only Raid 0 available with eFolder?
  • The eFolder Storage Cloud can virtualize the storage layer and present it to the compute layer in such a way that every storage volume is sharing the resources of a massive physical amount of storage capacity and performance.

• For each Replibit vault, the eFolder Storage Cloud is exposing virtualized logical storage to the Replibit vault as a single LUN. This single LUN has greater than 100 physical spindles backing it, as well as hot-read-cache SSD and redundant, fault tolerant NVRAM write caching devices. The physical spindles are located in physically different locations across eight different and redundant storage pathways.

• How does a MSP failback to their production environment after recovering a backup in eFolder’s Continuity Cloud?
  • The MSP has a few options when it comes to failing back from eFolder’s Continuity Cloud:
    • Recommended: The MSP will install a Replibit agent on the recoveredvirtual machine running in eFolder’s Continuity Cloud and configure a backup job to be sent to the local appliance they want to recover to. Using Replibit’s Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) tool on their new hardware, they can then point to the local appliance to restore from that backup.
    • Alternatively, eFolder can ship a USB drive with the MSP’s backup image (VMDK/VHD). The MSP can then use a third-party BMR recovery tool to install the image onto their new hardware.

Safety and Security Questions

• Did eFolder perform any testing when designing Replibit’s cloud solution?
  • While designing the cloud solution for Replibit, eFolder focused on durability and performance testing to guarantee that the cloud solution launched for Replibit would be scalable, durable, and reliable from the outset.

• Does eFolder have silent data corruption technology?
  • eFolder has silent data corruption technology that together with strong checksums assures that every bit of data written will come back perfectly. This is accomplished because the level of data redundancy that eFolder uses is very similar to that of a triple mirror in the cloud (and is perhaps more durable than the typical triple mirror because the physical disks in the redundancy set are physically located far apart from each other).

• Has eFolder ever lost data?
  • Regardless of eFolder’s scale of operations, data has never been lost or corrupted, despite the diversity of the data stored in the cloud: file-level data, data on virtualized NTFS volumes (such as AppAssure or Acronis), virtualized ext4 volumes, NFSv4 data, and virtualized ZFS volumes (such as Replibit). The class of storage that Replibit receives in a virtualized form as a single LUN is remarkably different than physical storage or normal virtualized storage.

eFolder Competitor Questions

• Why should a MSP host with eFolder instead of a service like Amazon?
  • eFolder guarantees that if a write-cache-flush command is issued, the data for all writes will be placed on stable storage and will be available after any kind of failure event. This is definitely not the case with most public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services.

• On which models of Datto appliances can a MSP install Replibit?
  • Replibit can be installed on all Datto appliances. However, the Datto G Series does not allow for local virtualization.

• How does Replibit's technology differ from Datto's inverse chain technology?
  • Datto’s reverse chain technology is based on a deduplicated copy-on-write file system, very similar to Replibit’s, which allows for independent restore points that can be instantly virtualized. The limitations of Datto’s implementation lies in its lack of file system integrity checks during backup, which can result in restore points that will not virtualize, are missing disks, and/or contain corrupt data.