Data Backup Solutions Elk Grove

A quick guide to data backup solutions in Elk Grove

Data backup is one of the most important parts of IT management. This means that it’s crucial to get the right data backup solution for your company’s needs (and preferably for its wants too). With that in mind, here is a quick guide to data backup solutions in Elk Grove.

Functions Of Data Backup?

1. The end goal of any data backup solution is to deliver your choice of RTO and RPO

As the old saying goes “Start with the end in mind.”. The end goal of any data backup solution is to get you back into production after an event. This event could be anything from an employee accidentally deleting a file they need to a disaster taking out your in-house IT infrastructure/main public cloud platform, leaving you needing to implement your Plan B.

The success of a data backup solution is traditionally measured in terms of RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective). In other words, how quickly can you get back in business and how much data can you afford to lose? Now that most businesses are in the cloud, however, there is often another, very important, consideration, which is “how much is this going to cost”. This is because there is a much more direct link between consumption and costs in the cloud than there is with hardware-based solutions.

2. The old 3-2-1 strategy still holds good

You generally still want three copies of your data (including your production data), over two media with one backup copy being kept locally and the other off-site. This is enough to give you a robust degree of protection without overdoing costs or exposing you to increased security risks. Remember that all standard data-protection rules still apply to data backups, which means that every time you back up sensitive data, you need to think about how you are going to ensure that it is protected.

3. Relying on hardware solutions is now considered very risky

If you are running a data center or a private cloud, then, in principle, you can use a hardware solution to manage your data backups and you can also back up to physical storage. The problem with using a hardware solution to manage your data backups is not only that it is very vulnerable to failure, but that its failure would create further challenges. For example, you would either have to have an on-site backup of the hardware solution or you would need to bring a replacement in from elsewhere before you could either backup or restore.

This means that, even in traditional data centers, software or cloud-based solutions are usually considered the sensible approach to managing backups. In clouds (private and public), they are the only way to go. In a data center, there may be an argument for taking your local data backup to physical storage, but even in a data center, you usually want to use the cloud for your off-site data backup. This eliminates the need to transport physical media to a storage location and also, possibly, more importantly, to bring them back again if you need them.

4. Cloud data backups are great for RTO and RPO but need careful management

These days, regardless of whether you’re working in a data center, a private cloud, or a public cloud, you’re almost always going to hit your best RTO with cloud-based data backups, especially if you’re having to restore from your off-site backup. If you’re in a public cloud, then you can simply look for another public cloud that meets the same standards and use it as both a data-backup location and a cloud disaster-recovery solution. If you’re in a private cloud, then you have a little more thinking to do.

It is usually safe to back up sensitive data from a private cloud to a public cloud as long as you encrypt it on your servers first. This means that you could potentially use the public cloud as a cost-effective way to store your data backups, but you would not only need to find an alternative disaster-recovery solution (usually a second private cloud) but also ensure that your public cloud storage location could link to both your main cloud and your secondary cloud.

Once you’ve chosen between a public and a private cloud, you then need to decide your RTO and RPO to balance your need for quick and effective recovery with your need to balance costs. When making this decision, remember that the more effectively you manage your data, the more effectively you can manage your costs. In particular, you want to make sure that you are only backing up production data. If you must keep dormant data, then it should be taken out of production and put into an archive.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data backup solutions provider in Elk Grove please click here now to contact Aperio. IT.

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