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"When all hell breaks loose I'd rather have multiple ways to get my data back"
- A Wise Systems Administrator
There are many ways to protect your data. The key points to keep in mind when architecting a solution are your RPO and RTO times.
RPO means Recovery Point Objective. In essence, how much data are you willing to lose in the event you have to do a recovery? Is it 1 week, 1 day, 4 hours, 1 hour, 10 minutes, 1 minute, 1 second, or zero? Typically the smaller the increment the more expensive, and sometimes more complicated the solution.
For instance, a tape backup system typically performs backups once a day. This means you're willing to lose up to 24 hours worth of data, the amount of time since the data was last backed up to tape. For many organizations 24 hours is like a lifetime and losing that much data could be catastrophic for an organization. Imagine if the NASDAQ lost 24 hours of data...
RTO means Recovery Time Objective. What this is asking is how much time can you be without access to your data in the event of an outage, 12 hours, 3 hours, etc. And remember, just like with RPO, the smaller the amount of time typically the more costly and complicated the solution becomes.
So get very clear on your objectives, especially with management, otherwise you'll never meet them.
Software
 There are lots of software products on the market that can "snapshot, image, replicate, PIT, etc." your data. Many of them are very inexpensive or even included with your system for free. We'll touch on a few of them and if you would like more information just contact us. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of options.
Windows
VSS (Volume Shadow copy Services). This software runs on Windows servers, giving you a point in time copy of file data. It's included so there is nothing to buy. You set the schedule for what files/folders you want to protect, and it keeps track of changes and copies for you. Shadow copies are typically stored on the same drive so this isn't a disaster recovery solution. It's generally used as simple protection for your users to recover files they accidentally delete/change/lose. It's also a user self-service option, which is nice to help keep Administrator workload to a minimum.
Another DR application for Windows that we like is BESR (Backup Exec System Recovery) from Symantec. BESR does too much to list in this newsletter but basically it does disk to disk image based backups, locally, remotely and more. One of the coolest features is the ability to do a bare-metal restore of your system to completely different hardware and be back up and running very quickly. It's also relatively inexpensive software and available for laptops, desktops and servers.
Linux/Unix/Solaris
Rsync has been around for years and is used worldwide. Basically a replication utility for local and remote copies. It can also provide Snapshot like functions. BESR 2010 from Symantec also supports Linux now as well.
MacOS
We all remember the Mac and PC commercials, right? I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. Well, one of them was for Time Machine, where there was about a dozen copies of Mac talking about how every hour he's backed up. There's a link on our YouTube channel under favorites if you want to watch it. For MacOS Time Machine is pretty much the defacto standard for snapshots.
Hardware
Many data storage devices have the ability to snapshot data as well. Typically they come in two flavors, file based and/or block based. Hardware based snapshots can be superior in some ways compared to software snapshots, but they can have their downsides as well.
File based snapshots are done based on NFS/CIFS shares exported to the network. Revisions and changes of files are periodically "snapped" so you can retrieve the file exactly as it looked at that moment in time. Just as with software based snapshots,
basically you set a schedule for how often and what volumes/folders/files you want to protect.
Block based snapshots are done based on block changes at the device level (the actual blocks on the hard drives in most cases). Block based snapshots are typically faster than all other types of snapshots and since they are done at the lowest level they are typically a better choice for other applications that run on block devices like SQL, Exchange, Oracle, etc. One of the downsides to block based snapshots however is that most storage devices require systems administrator assistance to recover, rather than being able to place the ability to recover in the end-user's hands.
Both
For many organizations to meet RTO and RPO requirements, as well as provide end- user's convenience for simple recoveries, you can use a combination of both software and hardware based snapshots.
For instance you might use VSS on your Windows File Servers to give your users the convenience of simple file recovery without involving the systems administrator. For your MacOS users you can do the same with Time Machine.
For the Systems Administrator's convenience you might use BESR on your Windows and Linux laptops, desktops and servers. You can schedule more critical systems, like SQL or the Exchange Server (or the CEO's laptop), to be done several times a day. BESR is very fast and in the event you have a hardware failure you can grab another server (or laptop for the CEO) and have it recovered very fast via bare-metal recovery, skipping the loading of OS, installing drivers, changing settings, etc.
For extremely quick recovery in the event of a large amount of data having an issue, you could use hardware based snapshots to recover huge volumes literally in seconds.
Get clear about your RPO and RTO requirements keeping in mind that using more than one method gives you options, and options when it comes to data recovery, are a good thing. If you need help we're happy to provide No Charge consultations to assist you and point you in the right direction.
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