Feature	Real-Time Recovery (ioGuardian for VergeOS)	Instant Recovery
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)	Near-instant, with VMs continuing operations seamlessly	May require downtime for VMs to restart on a backup appliance, leading to operational delays
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)	Can be less than an hour, depending on snapshot frequency	Typically ranges from four to eight hours, leading to potential data loss
Data Recovery Process	Inline delivery of missing data segments to VMs, no downtime	VMs crash on the production server and manually restart on the backup appliance, potentially corrupting data and degrading performance.
IT Intervention	Minimal to none, with automated processes for data delivery and restoration	Requires manual intervention for recovery and restoring VMs to the production environment
Performance Impact	VMs continue to operate from the primary instance, maintaining performance.	Running VMs on the backup appliance may result in suboptimal performance
Storage Efficiency	Global inline deduplication optimizes storage needs and reduces data footprint	Dependent on the backup appliance’s capabilities, which may not offer deduplication. Transfer from deduplicated primary storage to deduplicated secondary storage requires re-hydration
Cost	Included with VergeOS, only requiring licensing for the ioGuardian server	Additional costs for backup appliance and software licenses
Automatic Data Rebuilding	Automatically rebuilds data on new drives post-failure, simplifying restoration	Does not aid in restoring new drives; requires manual and complete restoration of volumes
Flexibility	Supports frequent snapshots based on customer needs, allowing for tighter RPO and RTO	Backup frequency and restoration capabilities may be limited by the appliance and software