Cebit 2008 : Libelle - The High Availability Company

Cebit 2008 : Libelle is an established solution provider for high-availability and disaster recovery located in Stuttgart, Germany. A strong team of experts provides years of experience and competences with a proven track record. Development and enhancement of existing solutions lie in the responsibility of Libelle Informatik GmbH with all software being developed exclusively in Germany. Sales and Professional Services are handled by Libelle Sales + Services GmbH & Co. KG.

Intelligent Solution for High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Continuous Data Protection with time-delayed data mirroring.
Due to its broad distribution partner network, Libelle is well positioned in several countries.
The solutions are supplemented by a great service portfolio, ranging from the design and implementation of holistic HA and DR concepts to 24/7 support.
Further, Libelle works in close partnership with all relevant hardware and software vendors and is certified per DIN EN ISO 9001:200

Solutions:
The intelligent Libelle software solution for time-delayed data mirroring offers protection against the consequences of hardware or application errors. It further protects against disaster incidents, sabotage, and data loss due to human errors. A valid state of data can be recovered within minutes. The distance between productive and mirror system is irrelevant. Trans-continental mirrors with terabytes of data have been implemented for years. Libelle solutions can be implemented independent from hardware and software.

Managing the solution can be handled either using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) or a Command Line. It can be integrated into existing or new security concepts. Libelle software solutions are enhanced by the broad service portfolio, a holistic high availability and disaster recovery approach, professional implementation and a 24/7 software support.

Key product is the solution BusinessShadow - data mirroring for databases and file systems with an automated application switch-over. BusinessShadow unites the products DBShadow, FSShadow and SwitchApplication into one User Interface.

DBShadow - for High Availability of DB2, MaxDB, Oracle and MS SQL databases on all current operating system platforms.
FSShadow - High Availability for file systems on all current operating system platforms
SwitchApplication - for the rapid switch-over of IT environments to a mirror system.

Patent:
The procedure of time-delayed data mirroring developed by Libelle Informatik GmbH is patented in Europe with the Patent Number EP1328867 A (WO0233550). The patent validates the uniqueness of the procedure which is core of the products BusinessShadow, DBShadow und FSShadow.
Libelle Informatik GmbH as well as the patent holders Hans-Joachim Krüger, Georg Hodapp und Jürgen Zipf emphasize that the patent validates the process of time-delayed mirroring itself. It is not meant to relate to any of the current discussion of patenting source code.

The time-delayed data mirroring uses a procedure where a time-funnel is in place between a productive and a mirror system. This adjustable funnel holds all transaction occurring in a database or in a file system. Physically, the time-funnel is located on the mirror system so the data-mirror and its funnel-data are still available in case of crash in the productive system. In case of a problem the systems are switched to the mirror systems using the Libelle solutions. However, if for example the data integrity is threatened by faulty transactions, only valid transactions are applied into the mirror system.

This process offers various advantages in comparison to hardware-based protection mechanisms such as RAID and Snapshots which only copy current data including logical errors such as a faulty or destroyed data table. Compared to backups, the Libelle procedure offers the advantage of a quicker restore time. Additionally manual procedures to check the data integrity can be skipped, so that the solution is also manageable by non-administrators.
It took almost four years for the inventors of the time-delayed data mirror to patent the procedures. Patenting procedures in information technology is particularly challenging due to the fact that a so-called "trivial patents" are not eligible for patents.