RenovoData Weekly Articles

Hurricane season is here.  As the Department of Homeland Security prepares a status report around disaster recovery preparedness in the wake of a natural catastrophe such as a hurricane, backing up data is an urgent mission for all companies – especially small to medium-sized businesses.  In addition to advanced online backup, a remote backup company provides data storage, data protection and disaster recovery solutions.

In times of a catastrophic event, like hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the primary areas of concern will naturally revolve around personal safety, while data critical to business operations are secondary - at best.  Business owners and employees flee with their loved ones, while critical business records and data backup media such as tapes are left behind.  This reason alone calls for a need of a disaster recovery plan that includes automated offsite data backup and protection.

Offsite backup is essential as hurricane season emerges – especially in hurricane-prone states such as Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.  A remote backup company that uses agentless technology is advantageous over conventional backup technologies.  With an agentless architecture, backup and restoration activities will flawlessly be performed once the backup software is installed on the host machine at an office location.  The data is virtually transmitted to an offsite data vault where restorations can take place at the file level, or can be used to perform a bare metal restore to a different machine or location if needed.  When researching offsite data backup providers, make sure they offer automated and unattended backup for all data files, including emails and databases held on PCs, file servers and application/database servers.

An additional benefit of using a remote backup company to secure essential business data during the hurricane season is the first-class data compression employed.  Data compression technologies, along with deduplication, reduce bandwidth and storage requirements.  Also, all data is AES-encrypted at the client site before transmission, then stored in an encrypted format at a secure offsite data vault.  Data is restored either locally or from a centralized site, as a complete volume, individual files or complete bare metal restore of the server.  Multi-site companies can use this solution to consolidate all backup and recovery processes.

A remote backup service provider is an ideal method of ensuring disaster recovery in the event of a natural cataclysmic event.  The consolidation of the backup process offered by a remote backup company offers a secure advantage over other data backup methods.  Data backups are compressed, encrypted and replicated to a central site and are stored in a secure, enterprise-class offsite data vault in encrypted form.

Tape backup is an outdated method that compromises the reliability, security, cost-effectiveness and convenience needed for data protection and recovery.  The Gartner Group reported that nearly 50% of tape-based backup systems fail to restore correctly.  Moreover, according to Storage Magazine, more than 34% of organizations do not test their backups, and of those tested, 77% of them found their tape backup failed to recover. 

A remote backup company offers a multitude of benefits as the premier alternative in offsite data storage and data recovery.  Five advantages remote backup services have over the traditional tape method include:

1.   Disaster Recovery.  One of the most important contributions for organizations that properly plan for a disaster is the assurance that data will be stored offsite in the event that the physical building of a business, along with computers, servers and tapes stored inside, are destroyed.  When a disaster strikes, business-critical data stored offsite such as customer billing, intellectual property and proprietary information are all safe and recoverable.  Data can be seamlessly restored to an alternate location, allowing for business continuity.

2.   Automatic Backup.  There are no tapes to manage, IT staff to schedule or vendors to coordinate a pickup and delivery of tapes.  This enables the business to save time and money and significantly minimize errors.  Remote backup allows for backups to automatically occur at any time on a schedule that best meets the business needs of the organization.  The responsibilities of assuring that the backup and restoration are successful fall on the remote backup company so productivity remains high.  When problems arise, the data is guaranteed to be both stored and restored through the automatic backup process.

3.   Low Cost Solution. The cost benefits of remote backup over tapes can be measured in several different ways.  The first advantage is the reduction of expenses associated with IT staff having to manually backup and restore data on a regular basis.  The return on investment can be recognized further through the realization that files can be quickly restored 24/7, keeping business productivity high and the business operations continuous.  Further, remote backup allows savings through eliminating the need for capital investments such as purchasing hardware and software.  Also, since files are compressed, more information can be stored at a lower cost to the business.

4.   Centralized Servers.  Consolidating backup processes through an agentless solution to an outsourced offsite backup services provider eliminates the need for agents installed on each machine that requires backups, thus avoiding the drain on IT resources, minimizing disruptive downtime and positively impacting recoverability.  The agentless solution that is offered by remote backup companies provides significant savings through simple licensing, singular software management, resource conservation, heightened security, backup consistency and improved restoration.

5.   Security.  A remote backup company ensures data protection and data recovery using the latest encryption technology to secure data.  A key benefit to using a remote backup company that surpasses all other advantages with security is that the data is always available; this is something that tapes cannot promise.  Although some tape storage providers offer encryption, once data is stolen, lost or vandalized, the data is no longer accessible.  For this reason alone, a remote backup company offers the security needed to meet business and compliance standards, while guaranteeing the data will be available for restoration.  The ramifications to the success of a business if valuable records were accessed by someone using unencrypted tape could be substantial, possibly resulting in a loss of customer confidence, stolen trade secrets and litigation.

Discussion:  How would you prioritize these top 5 for your business?