How to Move from Broken Backups to Next-Generation Bliss

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JOHANNESBURG, SA – 13 May 2014 — /BackupReview.info/ — Despite common knowledge of the value of data, many companies still struggle to establish a backup regime which adequately protects their information. Some executives and heads of IT departments are frustrated by and even deeply mistrustful of the official tape-based backup processes, giving rise to a sprawling ad-hoc ‘accidental architecture’ of duplicate backup procedures. It’s an unnecessarily costly and risky situation that allows gaps to appear and severely affects the integrity of data protection, says ContinuitySA – and it shouldn’t be allowed to prevail.

“This is a problem which manifests itself in general staff and even executive staff creating their own backups by making copies of important documents on public cloud storage services, external hard drives, flash drives and even their home PCs. Furthermore, it’s not uncommon for database administrators to make a complete copy of their database each night in addition to the official tape backup,” says Bradley Janse van Rensburg, Chief Technology Officer, ContinuitySA.

The same is true of mail, document management, virtualisation and other administrators. “The end result is a mess of backups of backups and massive growth of data stored on expensive primary storage systems,” adds Bradley.

Not only is the practice costly, it is also risky, with shortcomings and protection gaps a practical inevitability in the somewhat random approach to backups. When it comes to tape based backups, there’s a further common problem, too.

“Research from EMC reveals that 34% of South African companies are not sending their backups offsite at all, presumably due to the difficulty in working with multiple backup sets and concern for the safety of their data in transit. ContinuitySA’s experience is that many corporations and government agencies don’t follow this basic procedure, which seriously compromises their ability to recover from the loss of on inability to access their facilities,” continues Bradley.

He says that the quality of tape backups is also often suspect. “We’ve seen 10-25% percent of all backup jobs failing before they are even removed offsite. Even when a backup job appears successful, it is very rarely verified.”

With the point of a backup being the ability to restore data, failed backups and unverified backups renders the whole process moot.

Bradley therefore says it is arguably time to seriously consider giving tape the boot; and in a business environment where CIOs must play an increasingly strategic role, broken backups shouldn’t be clamouring for their attention.

“We’re finding that more and more companies are looking for fully managed and monitored backup solutions delivered by a specialist service provider, and which don’t use tape as the storage medium,” he adds “Traditional tape backups are not only unreliable, they are also extremely difficult to scale. They also do not easily adapt to new technologies which became apparent when IT environments began to be virtualised.”

Ideally, such solutions should comprise of an onsite ‘near line’ backup and recovery vault at each major premise, synchronised to a remote recovery site. “Because most restore requests are submitted within 48 hours of a data loss, the onsite facility is very convenient, and as it uses the existing local-area network, backups and restores are very speedy,” notes Bradley.

The onsite backup vault should be a purpose-built appliance that can scale easily as well as integrate with new technologies. It should be designed to check the integrity of backups, and compress and de-duplicate data.

Moving on to the offsite facility, Bradley says it is necessary to ensure good connectivity. “Providing the right kind of bandwidth is essential to ensure that backups can be completed as scheduled and replicated offsite quickly, with full encryption across the whole process. It’s also important that the recovery site has the necessary server infrastructure on which to perform the restore, but also to provide workstations for employees in the event of a major disaster,” he explains.

For those companies seeking to improve their backup regime, Bradley has some further advice. “When selecting your solution provider, make sure that you get user-friendly dashboards and reports to maintain oversight. Meet regularly to ensure that your backup strategy remains aligned with your overall IT and business continuity strategies. But above all – make sure your backups aren’t left to chance,” he concludes.

About ContinuitySA
ContinuitySA is Africa’s leading provider of business continuity management and related services. The company boasts some of the continent’s most highly skilled and qualified business continuity and disaster management experts who help companies, organisations and government departments of all sizes prepare for and deal with all eventualities. These include potential threats, events, incidences and unforeseen or sudden disruptions due to human error or natural events.

ContinuitySA offers a complete business continuity management solution which delivers fully managed ICT resilience through backup and recovery solutions, leveraging off an extensive nation-wide base of infrastructure, data centres, bandwidth and ICT capability.

ContinuitySA operates the largest recovery facilities in southern Africa. It has a number of recovery centres in Southern Africa with over 20000 square metres of recovery facilities in Midrand, Gauteng. Smaller sites have been located in Cape Town, Botswana, Mozambique and a joint venture has been established in Mauritius.

ContinuitySA. Our business is keeping you in business.

Additional information about ContinuitySA can be found at www.continuitysa.com

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Press Contact
Rebecca Warsop
Warstreet Marketing
Office: 011 8079842
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rebeccaw@warstreet.co.za

Source: ContinuitySA

Tags: ContinuitySA