What’s worse than hearing “the server has crashed?” How about “the backup won’t restore...”

The greatest danger to data integrity is complacency. Data backup equipment and software can often become a “set-it-and-forget-it” reality. Only when the server drive crashes do we realize, remember or find out that nobody has been changing the backup media and the current media won't restore. It’s one of those tasks that are just too easily forgotten, but it’s one that is way too critical to the ongoing health of the business. 

First Step to the Cloud

In a January 2012 survey described in eWeek, IT providers around the country reported that cloud data backup was the first cloud product in which most customers investeded. Some of the reasons for this are obvious: as with almost all cloud services it removes a significant amount of daily work and task responsibility from the customer’s staff and moves it to the service provider. There’s also the idea of enjoying better service at a reduced operating cost.

Of course the IT industry has been providing remote data backup for years before everyone started calling it a cloud service, so many customers are accustomed to it and know many colleagues who have been depending upon it for some time. One good example of a quality remote data backup service from a reliable provider is DataSafe from Dell. For those concerned about the security of data backed up offsite, Dell points out that:

“Dell DataSafe Online uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit encryption to protect your data and it also uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 128-bit to protect the transmission of your data to the data centers. Once your data arrives in the data center, we store multiple redundant copies of all your encrypted files. We understand the importance of keeping your important data secure and protected so you will be able to access your data through a unique user name and password combination. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your important data from unauthorized access, use, and disclosure.”

But What Happens When We Need Immediate Restore?

At the same time, there are many who point out that remote data backup doesn’t necessarily provide a way to restore immediately in the event of local storage failure. Companies who require this can take a “belt-and-suspenders” approach by implementing both remote data backup to protect against premises disaster, and local data backup to provide immediately available restoration in the event of disk failure. The need for this hybrid approach can readily be identified by determining how much downtime the business can tolerate.

Dell AppAssure is an excellent example of a local backup solution that can work hand-in-hand with the remote backup solution. As Dell describes it, “AppAssure first revolutionized data protection by unifying backup, replication and recovery in one software solution. Designed for virtual, physical and cloud environments, AppAssure combines snapshot-based continual data and application Windows backups, Linux backups, daily data integrity tests and flexible replication and recovery options. The result? Unparalleled data protection through a single, easy-to-use management console.”