BackupWatch

BACKUP - The Value Proposition

The value of a fully optimized backup scheme cannot be overstated.  The reports generated supply valuable information about your company's overall data protection environment and are a key component to ensuring business continuity based on defined recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).  Strategic decisions about architecting your data protection infrastructure -- to include technologies such as replication, snapshots, virtual tape, and bigger/faster tape devices -- are all helped when your backup operation is efficiently designed.  Data extrapolated from backup reports define the operational capabilities of your environment. This data will expose recovery time weaknesses thereby arming you with quantitative information to help in technology selection.

BACKUP DESIGN - Outsourcing Expertise

(And Sleep Soundly At Night)

It happens all the time.  A customer expresses interest in a particular backup software product because their existing product has not met expectations. Criticized for being unstable, unpredictable and far too costly to manage.  These backup headaches are consuming too many in-house resources negatively impacting other IT operations and personnel responsibilities.  It is time, the customer says, to consider a change from their incumbent Brand "X", and is expressing interest in Brand "Y".  What's funny about that?  Well, last week another customer related a similar scenario about Brand "Y".  What's happening here?

Backup software doesn't work the way you want it to work.  Backup software works the way the manufacturer designed it to work.  The Backup Design Engineer's job is to ascertain what the backup package can and cannot do relative to user specific backup needs. The real secret is to know when to use the package as written, and when to encapsulate it in scripts and other tools to meet data protection/availability requirements.  Backup programs do not properly address the many variables that can occur in backup environments.  As an example; when your goal is unattended backup, the software should not hang when a problem is encountered.  It is the job of the BDE to use the scripting features of backup programs to design a system that continues to work when failures occur or at a minimum report on the cause of hang and attempt a corrective action.

All backup programs have very good -- and in some cases weak components. The task of the BDE is to compensate for the weak components. On the other side of this issue, the BDE must let the backup package work for the user and minimize the backup effort.  An example is to make better use of Policy features, pools, etc. One can compensate for the weak aspects of a backup package with pre/post scripts or low cost hardware. In most cases this encapsulation can provide a very powerful backup program with very easy maintenance at minimal cost.  Many expensive backup packages have components that look good on paper; however, may in fact provide a more complicated backup environment with minimal gain in efficiency and security.  It all depends on the user environment.   Along with fast backup and fast restores the BDE must design an efficient offsite tape storage system. This design should minimize the number of tapes sent offsite with programs to age and reuse media to minimize number of media required.

Investing in in-house backup expertise is not always viewed as a practical use of valuable budget funds. However, hugh returns-on-investment can be realized through outsourcing this function.  Backup Design Engineers have the broad-based knowledge necessary to understand the nuances associated with the different backup packages, and how to best manipulate the selected product to operate at maximum capability within your environment.