This is the third, and final, part of the series of articles from AgileCloud, designed to assist you with your company's backup and restore planning and objectives, which can also be used as a checklist.
Identify the constraints
As with any strategy development effort, be careful that the backup plan does not conflict with any existing, or proposed, standards or policies. Security policies may exist that dictate restrictions for data access (for example, who can request restoration of certain files), offsite storage (for example, which data must be securely stored in a vault), and so on. The backup strategy should comply with these policies.
SLAs should contain specific service level objectives for different IT customers (for example, user groups) that detail things like allowable time to restore, onsite versus offsite storage, backup schedules, and so on. The backup strategy should enable these service level objectives to be achieved. If a conflict arises, the storage manager and the service level manager determine a solution or renegotiate the service level objectives. The specific infrastructure may also provide certain constraints on the backup strategy. Available network bandwidth, storage devices installed, cost, and other factors can limit the final strategy.
Define the backup and restore policies
With all of the information gathered in the previous steps, the backup policies can now be defined and documented. Do not publish any policies that cannot be enforced. Implement the appropriate monitoring and measurements to ensure compliance.
It is imperative that specific policies regarding data backups and restores be written, made available to all necessary personnel, and strictly enforced. These policies should reflect any commitments made by IT to other IT entities via operating level agreements (OLAs) or to clients via service level agreements (SLAs).
As a guideline, storage policies should be developed with the following considerations:
* Relating the data classification scheme to backup schedules. For example, company business data can be backed up once a day, database transaction data can be backed up twice a day, and so on.
* Pertinent constraints. For example, all requests to restore files can be submitted through a request for change (RFC).
* How long data will be backed up. For example, the data for application X can be stored for one year.
* How backups are scheduled. For example, to avoid network overload, the data for business unit A is not backed up at the same time as the data for business unit B.
* Storage resource management (SRM). For example, storage events can be reported nightly and kept for one week.
* Security considerations. For example, all company proprietary data can be encrypted.
* Maintenance considerations. For example, storage media can be tested.
* Disaster recovery considerations. For example, in the event of hard disk failure, all data stored up to the end of the previous business day must be recoverable. For another example, in the event of a disaster - as defined by the contingency plan - all data must be recoverable to the end of the previous business week. Note this policy implies that offsite secure storage exists and is being used.
Analyse the backup and restore requirements
Review all of the information gathered in accordance with the predefined requirements, previously identified constraints and policies, reduce any redundancies, and document the results. This resulting document can then be used as a basis for executing the next step in the process.
Storage management efficiency can be increased for environments that need to manage storage devices in a distributed environment. Consolidating storage servers in a central location can achieve this objective. Storage management administration, monitoring storage resources, and overall network performance can be improved by this approach. The overall efficiency of a storage management solution can be improved by such a consolidation.
Next chapter
Over the last three weeks, the team at AgileCloud has provided information pertaining to planning your backup strategy. The purpose of this information has been to assist IT in formulating the best possible backup strategy. Knowing what to do is 50% of the battle won; thereafter, knowing which tools and software to use to do the 'job' will increase the chances to 100% in winning the battle.
AgileCloud Solution
RecoveryVault is the AgileCloud 'best practice' enterprise grade end-to-end hosted backup and recovery solution that addresses all the previously identified strategic requirements into manageable chunks.
AgileCloud's RecoveryVault is powered by Asigra, which carries a FIPS 140-2 Certification issued by the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and boasts a record of 'zero breaches in the last 26 years, with over 1 million end-user sites'. All data is encrypted both 'at rest' and 'on the move' from source to disk, while in transit and in archive.
Storage requirements:
AgileCloud's professional LAN Discovery service provides unique insight into your data landscape, through identifying redundancies, determining the number of files that change over time and calculating the amount of data growth, as easy as '1-2-3'.
1. Determine how much data to store - check
2. Determine where the data is located - check
3. Determine projected data growth - check
RecoveryVault assists with bandwidth optimisation through the incorporation of advanced de-duplication of data and common file elimination, both of which will reduce the amount of data stored and the time taken to complete the backup.
Recovery of your data
RecoveryVault aggregates all backup data and allows for immediate recovery. The local storage module ensures relevant backup sets are always available for immediate restoration at LAN speeds from an individual file version to a complete system restore.
RecoveryVault is platform agnostic and supports over 80 platforms and databases, including: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Oracle, SAP, AS400, Exchange, Lotus Notes, Groupwise, VMWare and Hyper-V. With continuous data protection, local and offsite backup, laptop protection and support for heterogeneous environments, RecoveryVault addresses every hosted backup scenario.
Price
You pay less for storage through data deduplication, compression, archiving of old data to cheaper storage options, and with the incorporation of backup life cycle management (BLM) enabling cost-effective long-term data storage.
Guarantees
RecoveryVault includes financially backed SLAs that will provide your company with added peace of mind in knowing you will be choosing a 'strategic partner' and not just a 'vendor'.
We are confident that our AgileCloud backup solution, RecoveryVault, addresses each of these points and will assist your company in achieving a cost-effective, comprehensive and complete backup and recovery solution.
Don't delay, opt for AgileCloud: Reliable and trusted solutions today!
Get in touch with me, Brendan Elario: Tel: +27 11 447 4701 | e-mail: sales@agilecloud.co.za | www.agilecloud.co.za
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