Backup Truth

An Inconvenient Truth about “Backup”

Data backup, especially online data backup, is hot. We should know. It’s what we do. But the dirty little secret is this: data backup – whether online or not – is not sufficient to properly protect your business. We’ll explain.

Advancements in office productivity related to Information Technology are forever touted in the trade press and sometimes in the general business press as well. Over the years it has been PCs, then networks, then the internet, then email, then PDA’s and so on.

Not every idea has made an impact, but many have. Each time the expected productivity gain seems to come slower than hoped for. But these gains have eventually arrived. The reality is productivity gains don’t happen overnight but over several years. In all that time, users become dependent on the new technology. Moving from novelty to necessity takes time.

It is hard to say exactly when it happened, but once again, it has. The need for two or three file servers has made its way to small businesses. These servers now support email, customer relationship management, accounting, production systems, websites, intranets, wiki’s, and so forth – in small organizations. So every night in these companies, tapes whir or DSL modems blink away, all making backup after backup.

The problem lies not in backup, but in RESTORE!

Restoring data is difficult. Not so much if it is just one or a few files but if you need to restore the database underlying your email or your CRM, this can be a “project,” especially if a significant failure has occurred.

Why is it hard?

  • it takes time because lots of data is usually involved
  • it is inconvenient because it disrupts users
  • it is dangerous because a restore overwrites real data
  • and for all these reasons, it is rarely tested
  • and since it is rarely tested, it’s…well…not exactly bullet-proof

What can be done?

The answer lies in having a better way to operate our businesses after a failure. When is the last time you went to buy a plane ticket from a major airline and couldn’t because their website was down? Or tried to use a credit card in a major retailer’s store but couldn’t because their system was down?

These business disasters don’t happen all that often anymore, because too much money is at stake and the companies behind these systems have taken steps to assure that their customer facing (read “money getting”) systems are always on. But that costs too much. Right? No!

Virtualization solves the problem because:

  • virtualization allows creation of replica copies of production servers
  • online backup can keep these replica copies up-to-date
  • and virtual private networks can allow users to have secure access to remote replica servers to carry on in the event of a failure

In summary, Traditional Disaster Recovery solutions suffer from these problems:

  • strict hardware dependencies like tape drives
  • movement of large amounts of data
  • complexity
  • cost
  • hard to test

Virtual Disaster Recovery solutions based on VMWare break through constraints:

  • Virtualization provides hardware independence - so, testing is non-disruptive
  • Virtualization of stand-by servers requires low overhead, so we can provide a highly affordable alternative
  • The result is a disaster recovery solution which is fast, affordable and easy to test

To learn more about virtualized disaster recovery solutions, visit:

https://www.globaldatavault.com/disaster-recovery-failover.htm