Backups are a Turbulent Thunderstorm. A Data-weight Disaster is Imminent.
The digitisation of organisations globally has created an immense increase in content, which in turn has resulted in huge data growth. This leaves IT departments tasked with the challenge of managing this data and its backups.
And the global Covid-19 lock down has seen people spend more time in front of their computers than ever before, which has further spurred this data growth.
Silicon Sky was born within the virtualisation and cloud era, as opposed to legacy organisations that have had to disrupt so as to move into this space. For over a decade we have managed petabytes of data for companies across the Middle East, Africa, the UK and the USA – across various verticals from IT, financial services and telecommunications to logistics and manufacturing. We also boast Principal Cloud Partner Status for VMWare and have been VEEAM's Cloud Partner of the Year for three years running.
We have noted that this content growth combined with the necessity to retain this data for extended periods of time causes headaches for many IT managers and results in the following common challenges.
The inability to meet RTO’s and RPO’s results from poor backup performance
The inability to meet RTO’s and RPO’s is a result of backup poor performance, which results in backups taking too long to run, which potentially risks your data recovery. Missing SLA’s that result when you can’t meet these requirements means you can’t provide the correct service back to the business.
The quicker your business can run its regular backup – whether it’s overnight, during weekends or outside of your business’ peak operating times – the less impact this will have on your production workloads and possible downtime, which will save you valuable time and money.
Relying on Advanced Software Technology, such as VEEAM, allows for faster backups that are supported by a high-performance backup infrastructure. It streamlines the entire process, so that you can get back to business when it suits you – and not when it suits your backup process.
Failed data recoveries are the reason why you should test your backups
The number of times your business should back up its data relies on a number of factors, such as the size of the company and its data sets, available access to the required infrastructure, and whether there is sufficient compute and storage resources available in your on premises or hosted environment(s).
Based on our experience and current industry trends, we suggest anything from a biweekly to a quarterly recovery test, though this is dependent on the above-mentioned factors; otherwise you may face the risk of jeopardising your company’s data and hence profits.
Without high-performance infrastructure the chances that your backups might fail are greater, which also leads to much longer data restores and hence the restriction of productivity when you can least afford it.
Some legacy technologies do not offer the functionality to test backups. There’s nothing more frightening for a business owner than finding out that despite the fact that they backed up their information, data corruption has rendered it useless should they experience an outage and need to recover it.
The solution is simple enough. And it allows businesses to prevent these vulnerabilities by testing their backups using Advanced Software Technology to ensure that they were indeed successful. While this should be standard practice – part-and-parcel of any backup process – it is still all too uncommon, with an average of 10% of companies testing their backups based on our industry insights.
Regular reporting is necessary for IT compliance and external audits
Many IT departments adhere to poor reporting standards on their backups and backup infrastructure, despite the fact that reporting should go hand-in-hand with every backup, whether it’s outsourced or managed internally.
From a compliance point of view, the IT department needs to be able to prove that their backups are successful, conducted at the required frequency, and will be retained for the necessitated period of time. These industry-specific best practice requirements vary between each organisation, its size, and its industry.
Automated reports – that provide feedback on a daily basis on the successes and failures of backups – are the fastest and most accurate solution. These should be coupled with long-term trending reports that prove the success rate of backups and that they have been stored for the amount of time that is required.
From an operational perspective, reporting offers businesses the security of knowing exactly what is happening within their IT department. Furthermore, IT reporting needs to prove to independent auditors that an organisation has been compliant across the entire data backup process or has rectified any issues they may have encountered.
Financial institutions, for example, have much stricter requirements than other industries.
Backups should be standardised across multiple cloud platforms
Many companies opt for multiple cloud solutions, which creates data sprawl across various platforms. This also results in the lack of a single point of control that the IT department used to have when everything was hosted on premises.
As each cloud solution has a different tool set for their specific backup offering, IT departments are often required to familiarise themselves with each one and to re-architect their backups on each disparate system.
While multi-cloud solutions are a reality these days, you need one data management platform to help you manage your data efficiently. This will also prevent cloud lock-in down the line.
Silicon Sky offers cost-effective backup solutions that ensure high performance across workloads hosted on premises, co-located or across multiple clouds.
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