Its all about the recovery

April 4, 2012

Enterprises and vendors alike often focus so much on data backup that sometimes they forget about the reason that they backup the data. Customer’s focus should be on data Recovery not data backup.

All vendor solutions in the marketplace backup customer data but it requires real data stewardship to ensure that the data can be restored when needed. Over our 24-year history, Asigra has developed best practices around data stewardship to ensure data restorability if the customer looses a file, disk, machine or the entire facility.

The data has to be conditioned constantly to ensure restorability. The following factors can cause data corruption:

  1. Disc malfunction
  2. Disc controller malfunction
  3. Bad sectors on the disc
  4. Filesystem corruption

Access to metadata is not sufficient because bad sector on a disc can render metadata unreadable.

Following data integrity and consistency check functionality is embedded in Asigra software to ensure, data restorability:

  1. Ensuring data consistency – this process ensures that all the data components have been collected sequentially by the DS-Client (the data collector at the enterprise customer’s premises) before sending the data to the DS-System.
  2. Ensuring all data has arrived offsite before storage – Asigra’s DS-System (the online data repository) writes all the data being backed up offsite to a temporary location, checks and ensures that all the data has arrived before storing it.
  3. Restore validation – this is an actual restore simulation that conducts an actual data restore to a temporary location to ensure data restorability. Think of it as the data restore dry run to prepare for the actual disaster.
  4. Autonomic healing – this automated process runs on the DS-System in the background, scans the entire storage to ensure data integrity. Since the data at the DS-System is encrypted, the “Autonomic Healing“ process checks links between the data blocks, compares digital signatures between different components for inconsistencies. When corrupted data is uncovered, it is marked as corrupted and a notification is sent to the DS-Client to resend the portion of that data that was marked corrupted. This ensures that the data is always recoverable in case of a disaster.
  5. Backing up the DS-Client database to the DS-System – this ensures that if the DS-Client is lost it can easily be rebuilt with the appropriate backup structure.

When you’re shopping for a backup solution, please inquire from your vendor to ensure that the functionality they provide will restore your data, not just during a Disaster Recovery (DR) drill but in the event of an actual disaster (accidently deleted file, damaged hard drive, machine loss or lost site). If you require further information please contact C24 or visit www.c24.co.uk

 

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Posted by david ricketts

Backup vs Archiving

March 29, 2012

There is some confusion amongst SMBs as to the differences between backup and archive. These two processes are mutually exclusive – they cannot occur at the same time and are different processes with different objectives. The most discernable issue around the key differences between the two processes relates to security, compliance and governance.

An archive is just a stored set of organized data and the goal is to achieve an intelligible data set for long periods of time and in a form that enables granular data retrievable. This is important for businesses in highly regulated industries that include healthcare, legal, banking and securities.

Archived data can be stored on multiples types of devices including tape, disk and in the cloud. There are benefits to each; however it is important to determine the length of time for which you will need to keep your archives and the most cost effective means for your business is without sacrificing the integrity of your archives.

Here are the thinks you should consider when thinking about data archiving:
•The archive needs to be able to operate with different data collections while treating them at the same level of integrity — individual data records from a database as well as entire documents
•The access speed of an archive can be slow, but archive should have an extremely high level of reliability
•Data integrity must be maintained over the entire period of the archive existence – there is no point in having an archive that you can’t trust

The key reason for the existence of a backup is to provide an alternative data source in case the primary data source is corrupted or destroyed. Backups are copies of data designed for short-term storage and its most identifiable characteristic is that it will go through frequent replacement and update under controlled circumstances. At that point, the old backup will become less relevant (or irrelevant) for operational purposes and the data will need to be backed up again.

Here are the things you should consider when thinking about data backup:
•The backup needs to be quickly accessible
•The backed up information should survive with full integrity and availability for several months on the backup media
•The backup should be able to span multimedia media (if backup set is larger than media capacity)
•The solution should be intelligent enough to enable different backup sets (full backup, incremental backup, differential backup, etc)

While backup and archive solutions are both very important, they provide two very different functions. It’s important to take the time to understand the difference between the two or consult a managed services provider that can help you better assess your business needs.

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Posted by david ricketts

Adding a cloud tier as part of your business continuity and disaster recovery plans

March 20, 2012

Cloud Backup and Recovery plays a significant role in data protection strategies, but there are slight nuances to its use in these situations. In each case, a copy of data is stored in a cloud container and can be retrieved to facilitate recovery.

  • Backup Software-as-a-Service is when a service provider offers an online backup application and cloud-based storage for backup process. Backup SaaS can leverage the Public and Private Clouds as well as take a Hybrid approach, by combining both on premise and off-premise storage. The solutions provided by Asigra service providers fall under this category.
  • Cloud Storage Services provide a third-party, cloud-based tier of storage for  on-premises backup and archive solutions. On-premises, licensed backup products integrate with cloud storage providers’ APIs to enable the transfer of data into the cloud tier. This tier includes lower-end solutions  like Dropbox, Box.net, EMC Mozy, Carbonite, Acronis, JungleDisk, etc.
  • Cloud-based Disaster Recovery combines both cloud computing and cloud stage services to enable failover to a cloud-based instance on an on-premises server.

Using the cloud as a tier

The “Cloud” can provide an additional tier of storage, working well to compliment data backup as a replacement to tape. The “Cloud” is unlimited in size and by employing a Managed Services Provider, can eliminate the resources required to acquire, install, configure, maintain and provision on-premises backup storage. This also provides a key component in Disaster Recovery planning and operation – the backing up of data to an off-site location.

You may be thinking about leveraging the cloud in your business – and you’re not alone.  Your primary concern is probably security, access and control once data leaves the boundaries of your company’s firewall. It’s important to look for service providers who can provide you with FIPS 140-2 Encryption certification and SAS 70 or ISO 27001 accredited data centers. You’ll also need assurances that you can easily retrieve and move your data if necessary – all of which should be outlined and detailed in the Service Level Agreements.

The greatest thing about implementing Cloud Backup for your business is you will likely see an improvement in recovery time objective when recovering individual files and small data sets because they can be located and sent back directly over the network. This alone beats Tape backup hands down.

At C24 we are experts in cloud based back up and recovery solutions for more information please visit www.c24.co.uk

 

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Posted by david ricketts

When it comes to backup, recovery is key

March 20, 2012

When it comes to the cloud backup of data, it seems that we’re constantly bombarded by technologies, speeds and feeds, expensive and low cost solutions, and who’s best out there. We all know backup is important, but sometimes I think that because backup is such a main focus for so many vendors, we often forget WHY we backup in the first place. (So now everyone is saying, “to recover data you idiot.” Keep reading…)

When we look at the SMB space, we’re typically looking at an IT staff of one or two people. These people are also heavily over tasked, and backup is just one of the unglamorous and mundane tasks that has to be done. Not only is the IT staff heavily over tasked, more often than not they’re constantly juggling a “break and fix” solution because of being heavily under budgeted. So at 5:00pm every day, IT has to go into the server room/wiring closet and put in today’s backup tape in hopes that a successful backup is completed by the morning. Sounds simple enough right?

Now, everyone’s entitled to a little time away from work now and again. This is where everything that is bad that can happen, WILL. Now that our faithful IT person is away, this usually gets delegated over to the office manager. Prior to taking vacation, there is a quick meeting that takes place to show our office manager where the tapes are, and what to do on a daily basis in order to get our daily backup done.

Unfortunately what that IT person FAILS to do is show our office manager how to RECOVER data and systems should they need to. Doesn’t it make sense that a backup is useless if we can’t recover from it? So how does showing our office manager how to backup protect the business from downtime should there be a data or system loss event? IT DOESN’T! What if our IT person was out for an entire week and the company lost their Exchange, SQL or other critical server on the first day with nobody having the competency to restore it? The company won’t close down until it’s restored, but how are we expected to continue operations?

I hope that if you’ve gotten this far in this story your head is nodding in agreement to some degree.

Now, let’s look at this exact same scenario if our IT staff from the same SMB Company offloaded the mundane task of backup to a service provider. There would be no need to worry about that tape at 5:00pm every day. No need to hope and pray for a successful backup job to be completed the next morning as our service provider monitors this on our behalf. No need to worry about having to go and ask for capital budget because we have out-dated backup hardware. No need to worry about going on vacation (and yes, IT guys worry about things going wrong when they go on vacation), and no need to train non-technical staff to perform technical operations that effectively don’t serve much of a purpose in the absence of the IT people to begin with.

While that IT person is enjoying their vacation, should there be any data loss, or system outage, our trusted service provider is available 24×7  for anyone in your organization to call to enlist their help to recover (yes, they provide those type of SLA’s for you!).The best part of all of this is that it’s all rolled into a low cost monthly service.

If you’re ready to alleviate the pressure on your internal IT staff, please visit www.c24.co.uk

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Posted by david ricketts

The Difference Between Backup and Replication

March 2, 2012

What’s right for your business – a data backup solution, replication or both? There are advantages and disadvantages to both.  This post will review the considerations that you need to make before reaching a decision on which approach is best for your business.

It’s important to determine your business objectives for choosing a replication or backup strategy and in order to do so, you’ll need a clear understanding around the differences between disaster recovery and business continuity.

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process by which you resume business after a disruptive event. This could include a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a hurricane, or could be something less significant, such as malfunctioning software caused by a computer virus.

Business Continuity (BC) describes the processes and procedures an organization puts in place to ensure that essential business functions can continue during and after a disaster. The goal is to prevent interruption of mission-critical services and to re-establish full functioning as swiftly and as smoothly as possible.

If your organization suffers from a failed RAID array or a geographical disaster, for example a hurricane hits one of your regional offices, and you were using a replication strategy with no “point in time” backup, you would be able to restore from replicated storage to get things up and running quickly – translating into seamless business continuance.

It is atypical for something like the above to happen, but it does occur. Let’s look at a few more likely scenarios as it relates to replication. Whenever humans are involved mistakes are bound to happen. If a user accidentally deletes a file from the primary server, the deletion will be replicated across all subsequent secondary and tertiary storage. Another example is that of a corrupted file at the primary site that is replicated – making it impossible to recover.

With more than 90% of restores stemming from user error (accidental deletion) and corruption rather than data loss, replication and snapshots can’t provide the level of protection that is required as part of a comprehensive BC/DR strategy.

Keeping alternative copies of data in multiple locations is a great idea, reducing the risk of data loss and potentially enabling enhanced access, but fails to address recovery point objectives or RPOs that are addressed with data backup—managing multiple historical copies of a data set.

With a proper backup procedure in place you can refer back to a point in time, for example, when the last scheduled backup was run. If  there are multiples sets of backup stored, you can refer back to a version of the file/database, before the corruption/deletion occurred.

Adding basic data protection techniques like snapshots or replication to a storage system doesn’t make it a backup solution. Replication can leverage storage capabilities, but a backup management solution will always be required for complete data protection.

Having both replication and a backup system in place is the ideal scenario – achieving both  high availability for business continuity and the ability to restore for a point in time backup, but it can be expensive.  If the ideal situation is cost prohibitive for your organization, the best solution is to utilize a service based on a backup platform that can create a virtual replica of your environment versus replication.

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Posted by david ricketts

Common backup mistakes in virtualisation

December 15, 2011

Not Backing up Virtual Machines

Seems crazy, right? Failing to backup regardless of environment is an extremely risky proposition but generally, a majority of virtual machines aren’t backed up.

Here’s why:

  • Virtual Machine (VM) Sprawl: Most organizations don’t plan for enough storage when starting virtualisation projects and rarely consider rapid adoption and disaster recovery. Because virtual machines can be built with a few clicks of a mouse, they will be – especially in development labs for testing purposes, but also for full use in production environments. Often IT doesn’t have knowledge of all the VMs that exist or have knowledge but are unfamiliar with assets on their Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)/Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) requirements.
  • Backup Agents: The costs associated with backup agents can be prohibitive and quickly reduce the savings incurred through virtualisation. Every time a new backup software version is made available – there is usually an update required to every agent on every server.
  • Bandwidth Impact: There is often concern over dragging down the host machine and/or network by moving a lot of data for backup. The whole idea of virtualisation is to increase server utilisation/CPU utilisation/network utilisation and if you are successful, there is less “slack in the system” to handle backup loads.

Installing a Backup Agent on Every Guest

Many companies still backup virtual machines by installing a backup agent on every guest – a common strategy because of uncertainty about the ability to recover granularly, as well as other limitations. However, the impact of this approach is significantly higher costs from backup agents and unnecessary management complexity.

Today, virtualisation vendors (VMware, EMC, Microsoft) have improved APIs to support centralized backup with granular restore, and many vendors have the ability to backup at the hypervisor level – all making it unnecessary to install a backup agent on every guest for backup purposes.

Failing to Protect Applications

Failing to protect key applications is the easiest mistake and solution, yet is oddly still a common issue for many IT professionals. Backup is not just for files and data, but also key applications. If a disaster happens, the ability to restore the data in the application state will be important in terms of business continuity. Enterprise end users need applications and databases so when IT virtualizes these applications, it should also ensure they are backed up properly.

Failing to Consider Restore

Backup without the ability to ensure recovery means absolutely nothing – backup is nothing without recovery. In virtualised environments there are considerably more options to restore then in physical environments, so it’s not uncommon the backup of virtualised environments for recovery to be an after-thought.

When considering restore, IT needs to take into account what it wants to restore and its granularity. It’s also wise to consider where to restore to physical or virtual, onsite or offsite, etc.. IT needs to work with key stakeholders to consider objectives and the associated process for restore. It’s also a good idea to have a written plan that all stakeholders agree to, and to test that plan regularly.

Do you have disaster recovery plan? Is virtualisation part of your plan?

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Posted by david ricketts

How companies lose data – infographic

October 28, 2011

What would your small business do if your computers were stolen or destroyed? Would your important data still exist? In April, Carbonite surveyed small businesses with between two and 20 employees to study their disaster recovery and data backup methods. We found that almost half of small businesses have already lost irreplaceable data.

Although this survey was only done for small companies, most mid market companies would be in the same situation…..

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Posted by david ricketts

Backup Lifecycle Management : An Overview

October 27, 2011

Backup Lifecycle Management doesn’t receive much hype, but BLM is an integral part of how small businesses and enterprises backup, recover and restore data. While it might seem obvious, the data critical to business operations does not need to be treated the same as that which is not critical. With BLM, data is managed for long-term archiving and automated searching/restoration.

This is where the method of storing data in the cloud becomes more important – managing information based on how important it is to a business can save money when it comes to cloud storage and backup.

Aligning the cost of backup with the value of data ensures that less important information gets relegated to lower cost, lower performance devices. BLM works by categorizing data into two different types: Active and inactive data.

  • Active data is information that a business needs to stay operational. It’s understood as information that is critical to run an efficient business.
  • Inactive data is defined as information no longer needed to keep the business up and going. With new low-cost technologies for archiving data, including cloud storage, enterprises no longer need to be concerned about being unable to retrieve information from tapes or microfilm.

As information moves from being ‘active’ to ‘inactive’, it’s also moved through a tiered storage system, where higher priority data is stored on higher performance, more expensive devices. Inactive data is relegated to lower-cost, lower-performance devices for storage.

This is the most important aspect to how data is efficiently and effectively managed. What’s essential is understanding how information is used, and how long it needs to be retained. Using this information, companies can develop strategies to manage data (ie. A plan for how it’s to be stored) and minimize the cost of storing it.

For highly regulated industries, such as health care or certain service professions, such as legal or accounting firms, BLM can take on a new meaning when backup up in the cloud. Often the extra layers of legislation governing businesses in these industries change the rules for how long and where companies can backup data in the cloud.

It’s important to note that Backup Lifecycle Management is not a product, but a comprehensive approach to managing an organization’s data. For any business, it’s important to be able to define the policies governing how data is stored, at what point data becomes less operationally critical and when to automatically transfer data to tiered storage. Using this approach will decrease operating expenses, increase revenues, and manage corporate risk by distinguishing between the performance requirements of mission-critical applications, the rapid growth of reference data, and volumes of long-term archive data.

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Posted by david ricketts

When it comes to backup, recovery is key

October 5, 2011

When it comes to the cloud backup of data, it seems that we’re constantly bombarded by technologies, speeds and feeds, expensive and low cost solutions, and who’s best out there. We all know backup is important, but sometimes I think that because backup is such a main focus for so many vendors, we often forget WHY we backup in the first place. (So now everyone is saying, “to recover data you idiot.” Keep reading…)

When we look at the SMB space, we’re typically looking at an IT staff of one or two people. These people are also heavily over tasked, and backup is just one of the unglamorous and mundane tasks that has to be done. Not only is the IT staff heavily over tasked, more often than not they’re constantly juggling a “break and fix” solution because of being heavily under budgeted. So at 5:00pm every day, IT has to go into the server room/wiring closet and put in today’s backup tape in hopes that a successful backup is completed by the morning. Sounds simple enough right?

Now, everyone’s entitled to a little time away from work now and again. This is where everything that is bad that can happen, WILL. Now that our faithful IT person is away, this usually gets delegated over to the office manager. Prior to taking vacation, there is a quick meeting that takes place to show our office manager where the tapes are, and what to do on a daily basis in order to get our daily backup done.

Unfortunately what that IT person FAILS to do is show our office manager how to RECOVER data and systems should they need to. Doesn’t it make sense that a backup is useless if we can’t recover from it? So how does showing our office manager how to backup protect the business from downtime should there be a data or system loss event? IT DOESN’T! What if our IT person was out for an entire week and the company lost their Exchange, SQL or other critical server on the first day with nobody having the competency to restore it? The company won’t close down until it’s restored, but how are we expected to continue operations?

I hope that if you’ve gotten this far in this story your head is nodding in agreement to some degree.

Now, let’s look at this exact same scenario if our IT staff from the same SMB Company offloaded the mundane task of backup to a service provider. There would be no need to worry about that tape at 5:00pm every day. No need to hope and pray for a successful backup job to be completed the next morning as our service provider monitors this on our behalf. No need to worry about having to go and ask for capital budget because we have out-dated backup hardware. No need to worry about going on vacation (and yes, IT guys worry about things going wrong when they go on vacation), and no need to train non-technical staff to perform technical operations that effectively don’t serve much of a purpose in the absence of the IT people to begin with.

While that IT person is enjoying their vacation, should there be any data loss, or system outage, our trusted service provider is available 24×7 for anyone in your organization to call to enlist their help to recover (yes, they provide those type of SLA’s for you!).The best part of all of this is that it’s all rolled into a low cost monthly service.

Related articles

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Posted by david ricketts

C24 release datastore24 solution

August 11, 2011

C24 have just released datastore 24, a powerful back-up solution powered by Asigra. We have invested significantly in the under lying infrastructure so as to offer the best possible solution for clients.

For those of you that are worry about your data being stored in the cloud or on premise:

datastore 24 backed by Asigra Encryption Advantage.Asigra encrypts the data in flight and at rest from cradle to grave.

You can choose from encryption options that range from DES 56-bit with an 8-character key, to AES 256-bit with a 32-character key. Asigra maintains backward compatibility of its software so that even now, using the current release of Asigra, users can still access and retrieve data encrypted with DES 56-bit encryption years ago.

Asigra Security Track Record

  • Zero breaches or compromised systems in over 20 years of operation
  • IANA-registered ports
  • Data stored in compressed and encrypted format
  • Digital signature for every file and block of data
  • Data on disk in self-describing format
  • Background Autonomic Healing and System Admin
  • Restorability Validation Process (digital signature check)

Password Management and Password Rotation. You can align your customer’s existing security policies and procedures with your data protection policies. Asigra Cloud Backup includes a feature that gives you the option to automatically generate passwords and change them at random for specific backup user accounts, so that no one can access the account or the data.

Asigra Compliance Advantage.Asigra Cloud Backup can help your business with a variety of compliance issues:

  • Disk-based, automated solution that runs quietly in the background with no manual intervention – tape backups require manual intervention and thus are not compliant with regulations like Sarbanes Oxley, HIPPA and Gram-Leach-Bliley and others. Contact us for the full list of compliance requirements.
  • All backup data is aggregated, allowing for immediate recovery - traditional backup solutions are not centralized and lead to difficulties in obtaining and providing records to auditors in a timely manner.
  • Backup data is automatically & securely transferred offsite using FIPS 140-2 certified encryption technology via private or public cloud – traditional backup architecture requires additional 3rd party products or manual involvement when transferring data offsite on disk or tape and is thus not secure or reliable.

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