Protecting the heart of business

Where desktop and notebook backups primarily protect the information of individuals, notwithstanding that this contributes to organisational performance, it is on the back-end that the game becomes a lot more serious.

Even small enterprises typically operate one or more server systems to run business applications and facilitate the storage of large volumes of business information. Failure to protect the data on server hard drives is, arguably, exponentially more important to businesses than protecting the machines used by individuals.

Taking server backups as an accepted necessity, what should business owners or technology managers be looking for?

Given that there is likely to be a considerably larger volume of data to be protected, efficiency is one of the key factors that should be expected from a server backup solution. And with the importance of the information that is to be protected, the second essential factor should be automation. The third is the ability to easily access data when a restore is required.

Since multiple operating systems are used in server environments, support for all of them is necessary. And, since the information on the server is directly related to the business, reporting has to be accurate and easy to understand, both for the IT manager (to allow action to be taken in the case of incomplete or failed backups) and for business managers.

Let's look at efficiency, first in terms of the amount of human intervention required. Depending on people, where backups are concerned, has proven to be notoriously undependable. It's best left to software to execute scheduled backups since the chances of forgetting are practically nil. Assuming an automated system, the next issue is where the data is stored. Here a number of options are possible - onsite, or better, an onsite LAN-based set-up, which also features an offsite copy, with backups transmitted over the Internet to a secure remote data centre. The second is arguably better - if, for example, a fire occurs, the remote data centre is unaffected. A good system will also provide mirroring to a secondary offsite location as a failsafe.

There should be little question today about the necessity for backing up back office computing devices.

Petrus Human is technical director at Attix 5.

Transmitting the large volume of data over the Internet is a problem, though, because bandwidth is expensive. Fortunately, where data volume is concerned, the storage industry has made substantial gains with the introduction of concepts like deduplication, which dramatically reduces bandwidth usage by only requiring updates to be transmitted where files have changed. That means the remote copy is synchronised, with version control in some cases, with the live data on a daily basis (or as often as the backup is run) with the absolute minimum demand on connectivity.

What about restoring lost data? Since complete losses of data are rare, an essential capability is the restore selected files (and not just the whole bang shoot) only. Again, the minimum intervention approach is best; being able to access a restore remotely, over the Web, accelerates the time to return to productivity and lowers the impact on business. It also reduces administrative overhead; compare the ability to log on, retrieve a selected file from an indexed inventory and download it, to the nightmare of recalling tapes.

By the same token, assume an upgrade or replacement is necessary for a server system; being able to retrieve the data over the Internet or LAN-based system to load onto the new machine is surely a lot easier than wrangling tapes.

That leads to the requirement for effective reporting; systems administrators need to be absolutely clear that their backups have taken place and notified to take action when they haven't. Management needs to know, too, that data is protected - failure to do so is arguably a breach of responsibility as it presents potentially catastrophic risk to the company.

Such systems have to offer multiple operating system support if it is to be taken seriously in the server environment. Equally important is application support for the varied databases, e-mail systems and other programs used in business today.

There should be little question today about the necessity for backing up back office computing devices. The only question should be 'what is the best way to achieve a secure, reliable backup?' The answer to that question should lead to an affordable, automated, disk-based solution with offsite LAN/WAN or Internet-powered services.