You update your business software,
launch new technology and roll out
advanced applications to be sure
your company’s IT environment is cutting
edge, but have you stopped to consider
how you will back up your systems? What
happens when accidents occur and data
is lost?
“As organizations implement new
servers and applications, and add more
storage to support these systems, their
backup and recovery is not necessarily
being kept up to date,” says Geoff
Hanson, practice director for Pomeroy IT
Solutions in Hebron, Ky. “You want to
know where the data is that you have to
recover, you need processes and procedures in place to recover that data, and
you want to do all of this in a timely fashion with zero data loss.”
As privacy issues become more important
to businesses in the wake of security regulations, this backed-up data must be stored
safely, so it can’t be accessed by unauthorized users. Today, disk storage and virtual
tape libraries are ways to update backup
and recovery infrastructure.
Smart Business asked Hanson to discuss how to protect the data that is critical to carrying out day-to-day business
with an efficient backup and recovery
system.
Traditionally, how have companies backed
up and recovered data from their computer
systems?
Until recently, most companies were
using tape media to back up and restore
data. A company would back up storage
onto tape, and then that tape was taken to
an off-site location for protection. In the
event a company had to recover data, it
had to wait until the tape was retrieved
from off-site storage. Backup and recovery was a very manual process. There
were days and/or hours associated with a
company’s recovery time. Today, companies are moving toward disk-to-disk storage instead of tape. Disk provides quicker recovery capabilities and virtually zero
data loss. It’s important to note that
today’s backup and recovery software
applications are relatively mature. It’s the infrastructure to support the software
(the tape) that hasn’t necessarily been
kept up to date.
What infrastructure is available today that
speeds up recovery time?
First, companies can opt for a virtual
tape library (VTL) appliance. This infrastructure allows you to move your backup strategy to a disk-based solution.
Many companies use tape for their backup solution. A VTL replaces the tape
device with a disk-based solution. There
is minimal change in the backup process.
The same backup software can be used;
the information is simply transferred to
disk instead. Recovery is faster because
you avoid the lag time associated with
tape media and the retrieval from off-site
storage. Another approach is disk-to-disk-to-tape backup. Companies are replicating their disk arrays to either local or
remote disk arrays and then backing up
the data to either VTLs or tape.
What are other advantages of disk storage?
Your backup is only as good as the last
piece of information that was backed up.
Some companies only back up at night on
a 24-hour cycle. If they experience a hardware malfunction and lose their data, they must recover information that was
current as of the night before, therefore
losing a day’s worth of work. That can
represent a serious loss in productivity
and revenues for some businesses.
People are moving toward disk storage
because they can restore information
quickly and improve recovery time.
What should a company consider in choosing an appropriate backup and recovery
system?
The first question is, how much time
can you afford to be down? If you are a
financial company and every minute a
server is down you lose money, you can’t
afford to be down at all. In this case, you
need a high-availability solution and a
backup and recovery infrastructure to
support uptime for your critical applications. Also, you should review your current best practices for managing data.
How will you meet all regulations and
requirements? What information has to
be available to you at all times for you to
be successful?
Can you talk more about security requirements? How does backup and recovery help
businesses comply with regulations?
Companies are taking more notice to
privacy due to regulatory and security
requirements on their data and information. They are stepping back and asking
how they can recover quicker with no
data loss. Companies are moving toward
data encryption for data at rest as well as
data in transit. For example, hospitals
must meet HIPAA requirements. When
backing up medical files, this information
must be secure regardless of where it is
stored. Financial companies must also
consider privacy issues in lieu of
Sarbanes-Oxley requirements associated
with data protection. So, it is important to
architect privacy of content while implementing infrastructure for backup and
recovery.
GEOFF HANSON is practice director at Pomeroy IT Solutions in Hebron, Ky. Reach him at [email protected] or (623) 551-5771.