The most basic type of disaster recovery is to copy all of your data to magnetic media and store it in an offsite storage location. In the event of a disaster to the server or the entire building the data will be secure in an offsite location. The data can then be reloaded and business restarted.

The two most important considerations when devising a disaster recovery plan is security and cost. Magnetic tapes are the most common option because they have a large capacity. In addition, they are not-volatile which means they have a very long storage life. However, to get the life you expect out of magnetic tapes they should be stored in a media vault that controls temperature and moisture.

The most basic tape rotation scheme is to backup your data every day for permanent offsite storage. This would work but requires a tremendous amount of tapes and storage space. An incremental step is to only take incremental backups. This only backs up the changes that occur between the last full backup. This will reduce the number of tapes for any backup and reduces the wear on the tapes.

Now since you don’t want — or need — every backup, you can re-use tapes from prior periods. This is commonly known as tape rotation. Don’t forget that tapes will wear out and need to be replaced periodically. You have reduced the number of tapes but there are more efficient and secure rotation schemes. Here are three common tape rotation strategies:

Grandfather – Father – Son (GFS)

This is the most widely used scheme for tape rotation. It combines security with ease of implementation. It’s simplicity comes from running on a traditional calendar. On the last day of every month a full backup is performed and labeled ‘grandfather’. This tape is stored permanently offsite. On the last day of every week a full backup is done called the ‘father’ and stored offsite. Then daily an incremental backup is done called the ‘son’. Son tapes can be stored onsite or offsite depending on the volume of data changes. Adding up the tapes you will have: 4 son tapes (assuming a five day work week), 3 father tapes and a new grandfather tape every month.

Six Tape Rotation

This scheme is the easier to implement but lacks the redundancy of a GFS tape rotation scheme. It is best used by small business with limited data needs. Five tapes are labeled for each day of the week, assuming a five day work week. The sixth tape is also labeled Friday. A full backup is taken each Friday and an incremental on Monday through Thursday. The Friday tapes are rotated and stored offsite.

Tower of Hanoi

This is the most secure tape rotation scheme but also the most complex one. This scheme requires five tapes labeled A, B, C, D, and E. The A tapes are used for a full backup every other day. The B tapes are used for a full backup every 4th day. The C tapes are used for a full backup every 8 th day. The D and E tapes are alternated for a full backup every 16 th day. Or said another way, tape A is used every odd numbered day. Tape B is used every other even numbered day. Tape C is used every third numbered day. Tape D and E are used every fourth even numbered day. The B, C, D and E tapes are stored offsite. Confusion can arise because it doesn’t operate on a traditional work week calendar. If you implement this scheme it is wise to have automated reminders to help everyone keep track of what tape is to be used each day.

The most important thing for any tape rotation system is to get started. A poorly designed one is far better than being left with no backup at all. Keep at least one tape stored in a secure offsite location. Make sure the backup tapes are accessible at all times. It is also wise to test your backups at least quarterly. What is critical data and where it is located can change and leave you missing valuable information when you need it most. Do a full reload on a test system to see if you can withstand a disaster to your systems.

Techworld, a leading source of IT news, reviews, and how-to’s in the UK, is in its sixth year of celebrating the best products in the IT industry. According to their website, this was a “fiercely contested” competition. Like Manny Pacquiao, EVault Plug-n-Protect was up to the task.

EVault Plug-n-Protect is our all-in-one backup and recovery solution. It includes a full suite of EVault Software, a server head, and storage. Customers have a fast and economical way to get their critical data and systems protected. They get EVault Software – including their choice of EVault Agents and Plug-ins – as well as EVault System Restore, our BMR solution.  They can deploy Plug-n-Protect as a standalone on-premise solution or connect it to our cloud using EVault Offsite Replication Service for Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud (D2D2C) protection.

I haven’t had a chance to speak to any of the judges at Techworld, but it’s likely that they chose EVault Plug-n-Protect because of its value and flexibility.  The price is extremely aggressive when you compare it to similar products on the market; and it’s an even better deal when you compare it to buying the software, hardware, and storage a la carte. But don’t just trust my word. Read what customers, press and analysts are saying about Plug-n-Protect.

1. Reliability. Up to 71% of restores from tape contain failures.
Best Practice: Use disk-to-disk technology for backups. With disk-to-disk technology, your backup data resides on disk drives, proven to be far more reliable than tapes. When your backup completes, you know the data is secure and accessible on the disk drive. With tapes you never really know if your data is usable until you try to restore it, at which point it’s too late.
2. Breadth of Offering. Choice in product and service offerings meet your business’ needs.
Best Practice: Don’t settle for less than what you need. Vendor offerings vary widely. Some are designed primarily for consumers and others for enterprise data centers. Choose a solution that scales (see scalability below), and offers the features you need to provide the level of service you expect. De-duplication and delta-block technologies will improve performance, reduce your data footprint and save you money. Find out if their de-duplication offering is at the file level or the block level. Make sure the solution can back up servers, PCs, and laptops as well your applications.3. Security. 60% of organizations using tapes don’t encrypt their backups.
Best Practice: End-to-end encryption with no “back door.” Using encryption with tape makes backups run slowly and often takes too long to fit within a backup window. As a result, most people simply turn encryption off, creating a security risk. Even with the physical safety of disk-to-disk backup, encryption is essential. Look for 256-bit AES. Find a solution that encrypts your data during transmission and storage. Make certain there isn’t a “back door” that would let someone else view your data.
4. Accessibility. Companies waste thousands of hours waiting on tapes.
Best Practice: Ensure that you can get your data back with minimal delay. You should have direct access to your backups, with no time spent on physical transport (no trucks, no warehouses). Your restores should take minutes, not hours or days. Set yourself up to work with your data, not wait for it. Make sure your solution provider can meet your Return-to-Operations (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) which determine how quickly you can recover your data and maintain business continuity. Inquire about onsite and offsite replication that provide both improved performance and a solid disaster recovery strategy.
5. Scalability. Some backup systems can’t scale readily.
Best Practice: Invest in a data protection architecture that can grow with your business. You should be able to back up your data no matter how large it grows. Starting small? Look for an option that handles your backups automatically. Then, as you grow, gives you tools to manage complex environments. Look for “changes-only” and compression technologies to speed backups and save space. And insist on bandwidth throttling to balance traffic and ensure network i365.com | 2 availability for your other business applications. Make sure that their solution offerings rely on common technology to scale easily as your business––and data––grow.
6. Cost-effectiveness. Companies lose an average of $84,000 for every hour of lost activity.
Best Practice: Calculate the true total cost of tape-based back up. When you do the math, the dollars make sense: Go with disk-to-disk. Unlike tape, there are close to zero handling costs—no rush deliveries, loading, accessing, locating, or repeated steps. And there’s one benefit you can’t factor directly: Reputation. Reliability and security can make an incalculable difference with just one avoided breach or failure.
7. Compliance. Most companies have problems satisfying privacy, security, and data retention regulations.
Best Practice: Choose a data protection partner who has deep know-how about compliance, and the technology to ensure it. How do you recognize a strong compliance partner? They’ll gladly show you a table of regulatory requirements, and list for you how their products, services, and technology help you satisfy them. Even better: Use a vendor who successfully completes anSAS-70 Type II audit every year which helps you comply with regulatory requirements.
8. Disaster Recovery. Most companies lack a comprehensive, tested plan for disasters.
Best Practice: Find a vendor that delivers a complete DR solution. You can’t say your data protection is complete until you have a disaster recovery plan that is itself complete and tested. Your backup vendor should have both the product mix and professional services team to help you prepare for a worst-case scenario. Make sure they can help configure your backups so you rebound quickly. Best bet: A vendor who can train you to deal with disasters confidently, based on
your company’s actual configuration.
9. Ease-of-Use. Some companies don’t —or can’t—manage their backups from one place.
Best Practice: Get control and reporting you can use anywhere, with ease. Managing your backup environment should be simple, and the software you use should eliminate any guesswork that could lead to lost data. You should know at all times if your data is protected across your entire network—including remote offices—by simply looking at a dashboard. The software should be simple to configure using wizards, yet powerful enough to meet your specific needs with customizable views, job propagation, and roles-based security.
10. Operating System and Platform Support. Most backup vendors support a limited range of OS, server types, and applications.
Best Practice: Look for broad and deep technology that supports your complete environment. Your backup solution should accommodate your environment, not vice versa.
Demand a single solution to protect your laptops, desktops, and servers regardless of the platform and applications they’re running. Beyond the broad claims, check the fine print, and the level of protection offered for applications such as Exchange. For example, can they restore individual
mail messages or contacts, and can they support Exchange running on a Microsoft Cluster?
11. Customer Support. Backup vendors’ product support varies widely.
Best Practice: Find a vendor whose support is passionate, maybe even slightly obsessed. Customer support should be one of your vendor’s main selling points. You shouldn’t have to wonder if they’ll be there to help when you need them most. Do they offer phone support or email only, are they available 24×7, and who exactly are you talking to when you call that 800 number? Find a vendor that will treat your data as if it were their own.
12. Reputation. Does your backup vendor have a quality reputation and the financial resources to stay in business for the long haul?
Best Practice: Find a vendor with strong financial backing and customer references. There are a lot of vendors that have come and gone. When you consider a service provider, look for one that has strong financial backing, a solid business plan and the ability to be in business as long as your data needs to be stored. Ask for customer references and case studies as their customers are the best validation you can get.

For more information: continu.net

Susan, an employee of a major insurance company, clicked on her email at work to open a cute home video her friend Debbie sent. That 20mb video file was then stored in her email and, at the end of the day, was diligently backed up by her company’s data storage solution. Just one year later after daily backups of Susan’s email, that one video now takes up 7300 MB of space!

Incredible Data Growth

The incredible growth in the amount of electronic data generated for both business and personal use has resulted in higher costs for data storage and backup. Several factors have lead to these spiraling cost increases, including storage of larger files such as video and audio, multiple backups of the same files, and enforcement of industry compliance regulations. How often is your company backing up duplicate data over the course of a year?
With the exponential increase in the storage of email, video, mp3 files and other large sized files, business storage needs have grown accordingly. In addition to backing up business information, company computers often end up as the de facto backup for personal music, videos and email, resulting in additional backup storage costs for businesses.

Currently, 75% of documents are stored in email. In 2008 alone, more than 210 billion emails were sent.1 Backing up the same email attachments sent to different people in the same organization results in increased storage requirements, costs and time for backups.

The Contribution from Regulations

Government regulations such as the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act, Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and industry compliance regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have also increasingly contributed to higher levels of data retention and stricter requirements to keep data secure and private. For example, according to HIPAA, healthcare providers must comply with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of individuals’ health information. They are also in the midst of implementing electronic medical records (EMR). While EMR may increase efficiency and lower processing costs, it will also lead to higher data storage requirements. In the financial arena, your mortgage information, credit card activities, investment information and other private financial data protected by the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act add to the stricter privacy controls and data storage and backup requirements.

Grappling with Costs

As companies grapple with the rising costs and complexities of data storage and backup, a variety of options are available to reign in and more effectively manage the costs and improve efficiencies. Companies looking for ways to reduce their backup costs are increasingly turning to more modern and efficient data management solutions that utilized disk‐based technology and online backup. How much money could you be saving by implementing the right storage and backup solution? This white paper outlines 7 ways that new backup solutions can help control costs.

7 Ways to Control Costs

Using outdated backup methods or limiting your company to tape storage and backup will increase your costs, rather than reduce them. Instead, look for a solution that provides the flexibility and technology that will help you maximize cost savings. Implementing the following cost management techniques may help optimize your storage and backup strategy.

1. Reduce duplication of data

2. Implement flexible data retention policies and schedules

3. Use one system that works with multiple platforms

4. Support multiple locations or branches with a centrally managed, consistent backup solution

5. Decrease the amount of time spent managing the backup process

6. Control costs long term by choosing a vendor that can scale with your business

7. Consider outsourcing the entire management process.

How One Company Met the Challenge of Data Growth

One e‐commerce management company recently faced several data storage challenges that were driving up costs. With new clients coming on board, leading to immediate increases in data storage, as well as multiple databases that needed daily backup, the company’s old tape backup system was no longer cost‐effective or secure enough. Plus, too much data was bogging the system down, leading to long backup windows, a high risk of hardware failurand data storage loss.

KEY REQUIREMENTS
IN CHOOSING
A NEW SOLUTION

1. Reliable and secure backup and recovery
2. Ability to use storage space more efficiently
3. Flexibility in determining the best solution

As the company began to look at choosing a new solution, several key requirements were identified (see chart at left). The customer chose to use Continu Vault online backup and recovery because it met all of their needs.
The most important factor in choosing EVault SaaS online backup was that it provided reliable and secure backup so that if the servers went down, data could be quickly and easily recovered. Continu Vault provides end‐to‐end encryption for data security and has tier 3 and 4 data centers with SAS 70 Type II certification. This provided the customer with the assurance that their data would be protected and could not be accessed by anyone but specific individuals within their company. Continu Vault is easy to use and provides fast recovery – no need to find tapes or take multiple steps to recover data.

A collocation center (“colo“) or carrier hotel is a type of data center where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service provider(s) with a minimum of cost and complexity. Most network access point facilities provide collocation.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the benefits of collocating their mission-critical equipment within a data centre. Collocation is becoming popular because of the time and cost savings a company can realize as result of using shared data center infrastructure.  With IT and communications facilities in safe, secure hands, telecommunications, internet, ASP and content providers, as well as enterprises, enjoy less latency and the freedom to focus on their core business.

Additionally, customers reduce their traffic back-haul costs and free up their internal networks for other uses. Moreover, by outsourcing network traffic to a collocation service provider with greater bandwidth capacity, web site access speeds should improve considerably.

Major types of collocation customers are:

• Web commerce companies, who use the facilities for a safe environment and cost-effective, redundant connections to the Internet
• Major enterprises, who use the facility for disaster avoidance, off-site data backup and business continuity
• Telecommunication companies, who use the facilities to inter-exchange traffic with other telecommunications companies and access to potential clients
• Credit unions and financial industries as well as other institutions handling sensitive data.
• Increasingly, more and more small business are taking advantage of the benefits of hosting in professional data centers.

How You Benefit

• No Capital Investment – Lease dedicated or virtualized servers with pay-as-you-go software licensing.
• Quality of User Experience – Continū maintains your servers and provides expert technical support, ensuring that you maintain the highest quality user experience.
• Network Availability – Ensure maximum network uptime in our private state-of-the-art data centers.
• Increased Security – Physically and electronically hardened data center facilities.
• Network Flexibility – Gain added flexibility to accommodate new functionality and a growing volume of website visitors or Exchange users.

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For more information please contact us.

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Continū Vault Enterprise eliminates common problems associated with traditional tape backup methods such as human error and media failure, ensuring that your data is recoverable when you need it. In addition, costs associated with labor, hardware, tape transport, and storage costs are reduced or completely eliminated.

How It Works

Continū Vault Enterprise online backup electronically encrypts and compresses your data, then transfers it to our state-of-the-art data center. After the first full backup, only net new changes are sent, optimizing transfer time, bandwidth, and storage space.