When Traditional Backup Approaches No Longer Meet an Organization’s Needs
Company IT groups are managing an increasing number of services and data, and their storage and recovery needs are rapidly evolving. They are therefore rethinking their approaches to data protection and recovery, which are often inadequate and completely out of alignment with the organization’s objectives and service levels. To address these new needs, new generations of solutions that are well integrated into virtualized environments have emerged. However, these solutions are still poorly understood by IT teams for whom managing backups or reviewing back-up processes and architecture is not always a top-level priority.
These next-generation solutions generally use disk-based technologies rather than the traditional magnetic tapes. They provide a backup and recovery process that is smooth, fast and reliable. Disk-based technologies provide much more effective protection for business data environments, and often at a lower cost than traditional backup solutions.
Up to now, magnetic tape has been the most commonly used backup technology because it is relatively inexpensive. However, accessing data on tape is slow and there are limits to the magnetic tape’s reliability. Moreover, the great quantity of data managed within companies and the need to archive it for many years means that organizations have to make choices: What data should be kept? For how long? Using what type of media? The industry has been confronted with the need to reinvent itself in order to find new and ever more effective approaches, in this case, the new possibilities offered by disk-based backup and/or the use of cloud services partners.
Comparison of Costs and Assessment of New Approaches to Data Protection on Disk or in the Cloud
It is commonly believed that it is much more expensive to save data on disks. However, manufacturers have designed their technologies to address the problem of additional costs. These next-generation solutions deliver unprecedented capabilities to optimize disk space utilization by means of technologies and functionalities such as data compression and deduplication.
The approach proposed by disk-based backup solutions gives companies a number of advantages:
- They significantly reduce the amount of space needed to store and protect larger volumes of data
- They provide extremely fast access to data and faster data recovery
- They provide an increased level of protection, with more reliable technology and the possibility of data replication
- They position companies for the future with the potential of easily migrating all or some data to a cloud service provider
This explains the interest in software-defined data protection solutions. For example, the VEEAM software solution, which makes installing various mechanisms for protecting virtual environments a breeze. VEEAM is a practical tool that helps organizations automate their data protection and replication processes in addition to helping them benefit from greater efficiency. VEEAM’s Backup & Replication solution has become so popular because of its numerous unique advantages:
- It provides complete and efficient protection without the need to install an agent on servers and host systems
- It incorporates rich functionalities that are adapted to existing realities regarding the management of virtual environments
- It integrates seamlessly with various technology choices and new disk and/or cloud backup options
Because we listen to our clients and pay attention to industry trends, PCD Solutions suggests using a combination of disk-based technologies (e.g., HPE StoreOnce) combined with the VEEAM Backup & Replication software solution to achieve the levels of data protection and agility that are required in today’s business world.
Examples of the benefits of using a combination of these technologies: HPE StoreOnce and VEEAM:
- Fast, reliable, high-performance backup and recovery processes that minimize the impact on your business and employee productivity
- Federated deduplication—a feature that allows you to optimize the disk space used in order to reduce by up to 10X the required storage space (compared to traditional magnetic tapes)
- Simplification and automation of your data protection and archiving processes
- Centralized data protection for all your satellite offices
- Reduction of your total costs (TCO) in the medium to long term
- The ability to completely eliminate tape-based data management
Educational YouTube Videos
José Teixeira, storage solutions architect at PCD explains in this video interview how the new data protection approaches can be used to review and optimize companie’s backup architectures.
Video of interview
1st part (French only)
2nd part (French only)
Click here to watch the video.
Conclusion
To learn more about these new data protection and recovery technologies, please contact a PCD Solutions representative. We will be more than happy to answer your questions.
José Teixeira,
Solutions Architect,
PCD Solutions