As the amount of information being pushed on the enterprise continues to grow exponentially, there is an ever increasing need to maintain, access, and protect this data.
Backup Solutions
Overview
Data protection seeks to balance several divergent, yet business critical objectives simultaneously. A well designed, implemented and managed data protection system will employ many different technologies and processes that, together, allow a business to:
- Comply with internal policies and external regulations
- Promote operational efficiency
- Ensure business continuance in the event of a disaster, and
- Minimize both operational and capital expenditures
The evolution of existing technologies like tape and hard drives and the introduction of new technologies like, most recently 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.
Each significant data set will have requirements in at least one of these areas. It is critical to understand each data set and document its business requirements for the following reasons:
- to map requirements to technologies and processes
- to understand future growth requirements
- as a basis for reporting on data protection activities, and
- to obtain executive sponsorship for data protection expenses.
Trace3 Partners
All partners and products are handpicked to tailor a customer solution that leverages past investment, simplifies overall management, and dramatically improves performance and response times.
Backup Practice Expert
Our newest practice is lead by Jim Mimlitsch who has more than 8 years in this space. Although many feel backup can be a boring topic, Jim does his best to keep the topic fresh or juggle while he's talking.
Jim Mimlitsch
Backup/Archiving Practice Manager
Partner Quotes
"We are continually impressed by the expertise, commitment, and talent at Trace3. Their deep knowledge in storage, networking, backup/archiving, and virtualization has made them one of NetApp's fastest growing partners and key to our business strategy."