Business Focus: Backup solutions
Dave Mitchell shows you what to look for when choosing a backup solution, and subjects four contenders to testing
Four of the best backup solutions for your firm.
Most modern businesses are entirely reliant on their IT systems – so if you fail to protect your company’s data and essential applications, you’re taking a dreadful risk. And there’s no need to: there’s a huge range of data protection solutions to choose from, to suit all budgets and types of organisation.
If anything, the problem is that the sheer number of options can be quite bewildering. From software solutions to cloud-based and hardware backup systems, there are a lot of variables to consider. And it’s important to pick the right one: if you suffer an unexpected data loss, the suitability of your backup solution might be all that stands between your firm and disaster.
This month, we’ve assembled four different backup solutions from the biggest names in the market. We test-drive purpose-built backup appliances (PBBAs) from Arcserve and Barracuda, as well as software from Veritas and a cloud backup service from IDrive (see our main group test on cloud backup, p76, for more choices). We pull them apart in the lab to help you make the right buying decision.
Strategise and survive
One key principle of backup is that it should be automatic. If your data protection strategy relies on human intervention, it’s guaranteed to let you down sooner or later. Only choose products that provide full scheduling features, ensuring backup jobs are run regularly – even if the person who’s responsible for backup is unavailable.
All the products on review will do this and let you configure a strategy for making full and partial backups of each system. Full backups are just what the name implies, allowing you to completely restore a PC even if the operating system becomes corrupted. Incrementals only copy data that has changed since the last backup – a much more space-efficient approach.
Some products use an “incremental forever” strategy, which entails taking a full backup of the target system and updating it with regular incrementals. Also called “changed block tracking”, this approach is quick to run and can also provide quick restore facilities.
RTO and RPO
A fast backup is desirable, but also think about recovery speeds. Your business continuity plan should include recovery time objectives (RTOs) – in other words, you should work out how long your business can comfortably survive without access to its systems and data, and ensure that your backup system can bring you back online within this window.
You may find you need more than one RTO. A server running your core
Exchange services may have a much shorter RTO than a basic print server. In our “always on” world, services such as order tracking and social media may be important, too: there’s a risk of damage to your reputation if you can’t communicate with customers or respond to queries. For many businesses, therefore, RTOs are likely to be measured in hours rather than days.
Another important factor to work out is your recovery point objective (RPO): this defines the amount of data loss your business can tolerate, and therefore determines how often you need to run backups. If, for instance, you back up every day at midnight, what happens if your systems fail at 4pm the following day? Can you afford to lose all the data created during that period?
Hard and soft options
There are key differences between appliance-based and software-based backup solutions. A particular attraction of PBBAs is their ability to keep business-wide backup operations simple. They provide a single management console with consistency across all clients, which can ease support overheads and reduce operational costs.
PBBAs normally also come with internal storage preconfigured as the primary on-site backup target. This means you don’t have to worry about providing your own storage, although you’ll need to make sure your PBBA has enough capacity to meet your needs and accommodate future growth. Most vendors offer a wide choice of PBBA capacities; calculate how much you will need in a year or two, and make sure you can expand your storage if required without any major disruption.
Backup software is less of a plug-and-play solution. You’ll need to provide and maintain your own host system, and install and configure the software yourself. It can, however, be tailored to suit a wide range of scenarios: with total control in your hands, you can decide how, when and where to secure your data. Many packages offer a modular licensing scheme, so you can pay only for the functions you need.
Cloudbusting
Every disaster recovery plan needs to include off-site backup to ensure your company data is kept safe even in the event of a burglary or natural disaster. For small businesses, cloud backup services are an ideal way to achieve this. With competition driving down prices, you’ve a good chance of finding a provider who fits both your needs and your budget.
Be warned, though: we don’t recommend using the cloud as your only means of backup. If you lose your internet connection, or if your provider goes belly-up, you will instantly lose access to your data. Rather, consider it one part of a complete backup strategy, providing
“Whichever solution takes your fancy, we recommend giving it a trial run before you start relying on it to protect your critical data”
an off-site failsafe for your main data protection solution.
Furthermore, you should make sure your broadband service is up to the job before signing up. If you are planning to regularly back up servers, workstations and business apps, a lightweight DSL connection may be swamped by the sheer volume of data. You’ll end up annoying your employees and potentially increasing costs.
And connection speed becomes an even more critical consideration when it comes to your RTO. Restoring large files such as virtual machines or Exchange databases could take a very long time over a slow broadband link. Check if the product has a hybrid backup option that allows you to simultaneously back up to the cloud and to local storage devices that can provide fast restore speeds.
Ransom notes
There has always been a host of good reasons to make regular backups, but a comparatively new problem that’s arisen in recent years is the threat of ransomware. If your business is hit by an exploit that encrypts crucial files, the ability to roll back to a previous version can save the day.
To do this, you need a backup product that supports file versioning. All the products on review support this, and will let you recover file versions going back days, weeks or even months. Consequently, if you get hit by malware that demands a ransom to decrypt your data, you can simply browse the file history and restore an unencrypted copy of the file from before the attack.
Whichever backup solution takes your fancy, we recommend giving it a trial run before you start relying on it to protect your mission-critical data. All four of the backup products on test this month are available for evaluation. Even once your data protection solution is up and running, you should test its restore capabilities regularly to ensure any potential issues are spotted and addressed before disaster strikes and you need to use them in earnest.