Backup and Restore Your Data Center

A Backup Article Contributed by Melissa Larose

Backup and Restore Your Data Center

Data center enterprises need special attention when it comes to backup and restore policies. It is, after all, a data center, and is filled with the data that is the core of the business. Data backup for any data rich business is vital to the survival of that business. Without a backup of the data at hand, a disaster could cause the loss of its life's blood. But this can be so for any size business from the single owner to a worldwide enterprise.

Data is an asset in a way that fifty years ago or even 15 years ago it was not. Prepare the protection of your data with fully planned and carefully thought out data backup and restore policies that are a part of an overall disaster restore plan.

Backup and Restore Technology

Technology is growing by leaps and bounds after being fairly silent during the year 2000 upgrade. Yes, we heard plenty enough about programming, the issues with the new century and the actual storage of the date within certain important programming applications, and the necessity to address this issue with an unforgiving deadline to meet.

There were many processes and teams that were used and hired to meet this deadline and probably way too many management applications that came to be because of this deadline, but in reality there was not much technology of import created during that time period. And backup and restore processes were not what they are today.

But recently technology is gaining speed and there are many new backup systems and add-ons to existing systems that have appeared on the market, disk-to-disk backup and restore being the latest to be touted.

Backup and Restore Must Be Recoverable

There is no restore without a recoverable backup. You can backup all you want but if the data is not recoverable, whether the data itself is damaged or your process is, you have no data. Testing of your data center backup is vital. Testing will pin point a potential problem before it becomes an uncontrollable issue, or a rolling issue, that begins and has no end. Create a test environment separate from your network environment and test your backup data regularly to prevent potential hazards or there will not be a recovery.

Restore and Backup Systems

The latest and greatest backup and restore process to be covered in hardware and software products is the disk-to-disk backup system. The increased speed for both backup and recovery has opened up a whole new window for backup and recovery. Because data is now required 24/7 IT departments everywhere are clamoring for a backup and recovery system that is seamless, not disruptive to the work environment, and instantaneous. Disk-to-disk is about the closest system available today.

Compression is another topic of interest to data center IT teams. Storing massive amounts, in some cases terabytes, of data requires some clear thinking in regards to compression. At which point does compression need to occur? Couple disk-to-disk backup and recovery with compression needs for backup storage and you have the two hottest topics in the backup and recovery industry today.