In today’s modern IT world, data protection is an essential part of business operations. Backups serve as a final line of defense amid ransomware threats, human errors, and large-scale operational disruptions.

Companies might face a dilemma. If a company relies only on incremental backups, then in the future any corruption in the backup chain will render all subsequent versions unusable for restoration. If companies need to spend considerable time performing full backups regularly, this would require substantial network bandwidth and storage resources.

To help companies solve this dilemma, Synology has developed the SURE (Synology Unified Reduction Engine) technology, which optimizes backup transmission and storage efficiency while making your data protection architecture resilient to cyberattacks.

Reshape your backup architecture with SURE technology

Synology ActiveProtect has been designed around the principle of version independence and data reduction. This means that each backup version is a standalone version which can be recovered independently while minimizing storage usage.

SURE technology uses two key mechanisms to meet this goal:

Modern backup chain technology

When using traditional backup methods such as forever-incremental backups, if a single backup version is found to be corrupt, this could compromise the entire backup chain. This is why traditional backup vendors recommend performing full backups periodically to reduce the risk of sudden data corruption.

Synology ActiveProtect uses a unique backup chain architecture that integrates multiple Changed Block Tracking (CBT) mechanisms. With this method, during each backup, only changed data blocks are captured. This reduces detection and data transfer times.

Additionally, through snapshot-like backup replication technology, the system can quickly replicate the previous disk image within seconds. With this process, only KB-level metadata needs to be processed, resulting in minimal impact on system I/O performance. With this backup architecture, each backup version essentially functions as a standalone version.

Even if any previous versions are deleted, only the data blocks for that specific version are removed, without affecting other backup versions.

Data deduplication technology

Synology ActiveProtect uses real-time data deduplication to optimize storage efficiency. Backed up data is divided into 4 KB blocks while each block is assigned a unique fingerprint generated via the SHA-256 algorithm. This is to ensure data integrity and uniqueness. After an index has been created, the system compares new data blocks with existing data that has already been stored. If any duplicate data is detected, it will automatically be removed.

In addition, ActiveProtect has also integrated the global deduplication technology which combines source-side and server-side deduplication to enhance storage efficiency and help companies looking to implement the 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy for off-site backup protection. This is useful for geographically distributed or multi-site environments, as the system can deduplicate data before it is transmitted to the backup server. This reduces cross-site network traffic and enhances overall backup performance when storing off-site backups.

View the ActiveProtect data deduplication white paper

How SURE technology can help your company

Eliminate scheduling full backups and reduce network resources

With traditional backups, periodic full backups are performed to rebuild backup chains and ensure reliable recovery. However, performing full backups can impact company network and resources.

With SURE technology, each backup version is processed into a deduplicated “independent full state” at the system level. This means that each backup transfer is lightweight and essentially functions as an incremental backup. However, at the system level, each backup version is regarded as a complete and full version. This means that organizations no longer need to sacrifice time and resources to perform routine full backups.

Eliminate the risk of backup chain failure with independent backup versions

One of the biggest challenges of traditional backups is that the backup versions have dependencies, resulting in backup chains. Once the backup chain is broken, all subsequent versions may not be recoverable—especially if any previous versions are corrupt.

SURE technology ensures that each backup version is independent and complete on its own. This means that the backup versions don’t need to rely on one another. Historical versions can be deleted on the basis of the retention policies, meaning that companies don’t have to worry about invalid backup versions.

Synology ActiveProtect ensures data integrity with self-healing capabilities that detect and repair corrupt data. Validate disaster recovery readiness by conducting DR drills in a sandboxed environment via ActiveProtect’s built-in hypervisor and meet the 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy.

Reduce RTO with independent version recovery

In the event of a disaster, every second matters. When using traditional backups that rely on full backups to restore data, the process of reconstructing the full backup along with incremental backup blocks to merge backup chains take significant time and resources, resulting in a slower recovery process.

With ActiveProtect, every backup version can be recovered independently without multi-version reconstruction. To quickly restore data, IT admins need to select their desired recovery point only. This significantly reduces the Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

Reduce storage and data transfer costs

Some vendors tend to calculate deduplication ratios on the basis of the full data size that hasn’t been deduplicated yet. This could inflate the deduplication ratio.

With SURE technology, the duplicate data is removed at the source before transmission. The deduplication ratio is calculated based on the actual amount of changed data transferred after data deduplication. While the result may appear conservative, it is a more accurate reflection of the actual network bandwidth and optimized storage capacity.

Conclusion

Synology ActiveProtect’s SURE technology empowers organizations to achieve efficiency and reliability without compromise. Each standalone version can be recovered independently, since changed data blocks are transferred only during backups. In addition, Synology ActiveProtect’s global deduplication mechanism ensures that only new or changed data is safeguarded, optimizing storage capacity and network bandwidth.

Synology ActiveProtect allows companies to achieve faster backups, reliable recovery, and optimize storage usage. As data volumes continue to grow and cyber risks increase, ActiveProtect helps organizations establish a resilient data protection foundation that supports continuous business growth.

Click here to learn more about Synology ActiveProtect.