Backup and Archiving Solutions
Overview
Without a good backup and disaster recovery plan your business is literally playing with fire. It’s never a question of if data will be destroyed, it’s a question of when. But backup solutions go well beyond simply recovering lost or corrupted date. It requires a well thought out solution that takes into account recovery speed, down time and business continuity, especially during crisis periods. A well designed, implemented and managed data protection scheme will:
- Allow rapid recovery in the event of data loss
- Meet and exceed regulatory requirements
- Ensure that business keeps moving even in the event of critical infrastructure failure
- Protect your operational and capital expenditures
The evolution of existing technologies like tape and hard drives and the introduction of new technologies like deduplication, force businesses to reevaluate their data protection plans on a two to three year cycle. This is because data continues to grow at an increasing rate. Technological improvements, like hard drives with twice the capacity for the same price; and tapes with twice the density and 50% more throughput, for example, can dramatically impact a business’ ability to deal with additional data.
Approach
Data is backed up for use in one or more of the following ways:
Operational
This includes any use that can reasonably be expected to happen. Examples of operational use include restoring a deleted file, recovering from the failure of a single system, and providing a developer with a copy of a production database. The need to minimize effort and delay; and maximize efficiency dominates here.
Disaster Recovery
Although these use scenarios are not likely to happen, if one was to happen, the impact on the business would be so great that the cost of protecting against the remote chance is justified.
Compliance
This data is not likely to be used, but preservation of this data for a predetermined amount of time is mandated by company policy, external regulations or both. The consequences of non-compliance validate these expenses.
At Bulldog Data, we focus strongly on Symantec Net Backup, Commvault and for SMB’s vRanger and Acronis. We’re constantly watching for new and improved backup technologies to come to the forefront.
