There is huge pressure on today's disaster planning professionals who ensure uninterrupted operation and immediate data recovery. Faced with increasingly narrow recovery windows and zero tolerance for disruption, they are increasingly looking outside the box for recovery solutions.
The forces of regulatory compliance, email and new media have joined to create a data monster of gigantic proportions. According the industry estimates, an organization that had one terabyte (TB) of storage at the beginning of millennium now has to manage 10 to 15 TB. It has been found that companies spend between 25 per cent and 45 per cent of their IT budgets on storage so it is a cost that needs to be controlled.
Today, backup has become the bane of IT managers everywhere. In too many organizations, the sheer volume of data requiring backup has increased beyond the manageable, even as the amount of time and resources needed to back it up have shriveled. Addded to this, there's huge pressure to ensure data is intact, searchable, and retrievable in any contingency whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made one.
Given all this, it's no surprise that online backup/recovery services are gaining in popularity—despite the fact that their return on investment can baffle the bean counters. The key to reigning in the data monster is online backup and recovery. a.k.a. electronic vaulting.
With its ability to perform backup and recovery quickly and efficiently, electronic vaulting is giving traditional backup and recovery strategies a run for their money. It's no surprise that this technology, which once used to be seen as unconventional and experimental, has become mainstream.
Market Momentum
Gartner has estimated that 93% of organizations that have bore the burnt of a significant data loss are out of business within five years. The silver lining, however, is that online backup /recovery services have evolved over the past few years. As tape-drive implosions are a permanent feature and hackers are finding new ways to break encryption codes, online data backup/recovery is today an attractive proposition.
These days outsourcing storage operations to third-party services providers is gaining popular currency. Consumers, larger enterprises, or small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), are outsourcing a critical business function such as backup and recovery. For small to midsized enterprise that do not have dedicated IT staffs, it is impossible to adequately secure data without outside support.
The reported loss of backup tapes and the cost of physical tape vaulting provide further incentives for switching to online backup/recovery. Data can be more secure with online backup thanks to automatic data encryption.
But not all organizations are ready to swallow the costs of handing off the entire backup issue to a third-party service provider. Added to this, some are apprehensive about losing control of key data. The decision about whether to switch to online backup eventually boils down to money, and each company has different circumstances that have to be taken into account. Factors such as how much data (and how critical it is), how many remote locations, and the nature of the existing infrastructure and IT staff all need to be considered.
Every small to midsized enterprise has a recurring nightmare before backup time: a disaster wreaks havoc on the network, knocking out local backups with it. Things get uglier when offsite backups fail as well. This nightmare has been a reality for some, but these days data backup services are smarter, more affordable, and even faster, giving SMEs the confidence they need in times of emergency.
There always seems to be some sort of issue with tapes not working and backups failing. The company may lose a client if it cannot provide a backed-up copy of an accidentally deleted or corrupt file. Online backup is the answer. Online backup allows organizations which have several locations to centralize that service. Their IT staffs can recover to a central location and they can push data out to where it’s needed without needing IT staff in every location. The remote office also doesn’t need backup equipment, tapes, and pickup services for off-site management.
-Online backup and recovery-specifically, outsourcing storage operations to third-party services providers-may make more sense than ever. Whether for consumers, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), or larger enterprises, outsourcing a critical business function such as backup and recovery, which requires high reliability and technical expertise, entails a certain amount of risk. But as more and more tapes are lost and hackers find new ways to break encryption codes, the risk-to-benefit ratio is in some cases tipping in favor of trusting outside experts to back up-and recover-your data.
Pros of online backup
The biggest benefit to online backup/recovery is reliability compared to other methods such as offsite backup tapes. Tape-based backup is only 70% to 80% reliable for various reasons such as hardware/software failures and personnel failing to verify complete backups. For most of the enterprises the online backup system has become the primary line of defense for disaster recovery due to its reliability, automation, and ease of use.
Automating, outsourcing, and retrieving data quickly are the compelling reasons for using online backup/recovery. Backups can be scheduled or, in some cases, continuous. Automatic e-mail notification occurs when the backup is complete or if it cannot be completed if the Internet connection is down. Also, data is sent off-site immediately and can be restored in minutes from disk versus hours or even days if data is restored from off-site tape.
Disk-to-disk backup is a hot button, and the benefits of it are inherent in online backup and recovery.
The advantages of online data backup services outweigh those of traditional backup schemes. The process of online backup and recovery services is managed by service provider experts and the technical aspects are fully automated. While evaluating a backup and recovery solution provider, its is advisable to ask for recovery, since some vendors only guarantee the data backup.
Down Side
While the benefits of online backup and recovery are compelling, there are potential downsides. As there is a variety of pricing options available, it becomes a difficult task for consumers to make apples-to-apples comparisons Also, bandwidth can be a potential problem.
The conduit has to be fast enough to provide at least as much capability as required, and the bigger the pipe, the more expensive it is.
The first time users send their data to the data center, it can be a long process, depending on the amount of data being sent. However experts are of the view that data is compressed, and only a small percentage of data is transmitted after the initial download.
Though it seems that the pros seem to outweigh the cons of online backup/recovery, there is unanimity among the analysts that data needs to be backed up off-site as an insurance against disaster.
As there are no standard pricing models for online backup/recovery, it becomes a confusion propositions. To overcome this problem, standardization of industry is a must. But it is for certain that online backup/recovery is cost-effective compared to other backup methodologies, such as backing up to tape.
For SMBs
Small businesses often are in the dock while addressing the data backup and recovery for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is the lack of awareness to choose an affordable, easy-to-use system that does not require constant monitoring.
According to the estimates by Gartner, 40% of SMBs don’t back up their data. Of those that do, 64% do it onsite. This is putting their businesses at tremendous risk. Just a few years ago there was no easy answer for these businesses, which often just didn’t have the resources to do the job right. But now times have changed.
The online backup and recovery market has exploded. Enterprises are now offering offsite disk-to-disk backup for a fraction of what it would cost to set up hardware and maintain it internally. The data is transferred online, with on-the-fly encryption for added protection. Many analysts are of the view that these services have the potential of being the silver bullet for SME backup requirements.
However, the market is now abuzz with many storage solutions that address the requirements of small businesses. As the need to store ever more data increases, it poses three key challenges to the SMBs: disparate islands of storage, under-utilisation of resources and added cost and complexity. SMBs do not have the luxury of large storage-savvy staff to manage expanding storage capacity. Nor do they have the budget to invest in some of the high-end storage systems that have been deployed by large enterprises to improve the efficiency of their data storage and to reduce running costs
Will Online backup/recovery Work For You?
Thanks to the popularity of the Online backup and recovery services, a flurry of new companies are offering online backup. There are a few things to evaluate before choosing whom to buy from. First, be sure to ask what kind of encryption the company offers for your data. Second, you should know how long restores will take. It is also important to see if a company offers SLAs or not; a higher monthly rate may be worth it if there are more performance guarantees. Finally, be sure to ask if your choice is a reseller. If it is, it is advisable to evaluate the service itself to be sure that it is a good match for your business
Determining whether your business is in need of a third party service to address storage-related concerns or disaster recovery requires a careful assessment of current procedures, equipment, and personnel. Such analysis should also consider the risk involved with losing data, whether due to insufficient backups, incomplete storage, or disaster. High risk could easily justify the cost of hiring a service, particularly if that same analysis reveals areas that need money to once again be effective, such as aging equipment.
When considering a service, it should be kept in mind that some providers gear their offerings toward larger companies, and their pricing is a reflection of that emphasis. However, many service providers tailor heir solutions to SMBs, so be sure to ask the provider for options.
Finally, be sure to ask peers and others in the industry about their experiences with service providers. These services aren’t always panacea that immediately remedy storage-related woes, and also speak to others who found that their in-house solutions were equally effective when tweaked or upgraded using the same money previously spent on third-party providers.
An inevitable evolution
Despite the current myths surrounding online backup, it is rapidly becoming the standard for data backup storage. Online backup has established itself as a fundamental component of disaster recovery and business continuity plans. So it can be said with a certain degree of certainty that online backup is a sensible solution that makes sense to a wide variety of enterprises that depend on their data for survival.
-By: 'InfoStore' Bureau. |
