FEATURE
So, backups need to be running as and
when data is altered to ensure that the
fundamental information and systems
on which the business relies can be
recovered to the state they were in when
an outage of fault occurs.
error, you always need a plan B when
it comes to business continuity and
protecting the availability of data.
When disaster strikes, IT departments
are under pressure to minimise the
impact of employees and customers
as much as possible and this is a
continuous effort rather than a job which
can be done once in a while.
Eat, sleep, backup, repeat . . .
The importance of backups
MOHAMAD
MOHAMAD RIZK,
RIZK, MANAGER
MANAGER
SYSTEM
MIDDLE
SYSTEM ENGINEERS,
ENGINEERS,
MIDDLE
EAST
US US
EAST AT
AT VEEAM,
VEEAM, TALKS
TALKS
THROUGH
THROUGH THE
THE IMPORTANCE
IMPORTANCE
OF
THE
OF BACKUPS
BACKUPS TO
TO ENSURE
ENSURE
THE
RESILIENCE
OF
RESILIENCE AND
AND SECURITY
SECURITY
DATA.
OF DATA.
The concept of backups is controvertible
for businesses with a clear vision and
strategy. Some executives will tell
you that having a plan B means that
plan A will never work. There is one
type of backup option which is almost
universally agreed on as being a
necessity though.
When it comes to file storage and
applications, backup and replication is
widely considered a given. In practice,
however, the importance of backing up
is sometimes overlooked – an error of
which no business should fall foul.
Whether it’s due to outages caused by
hardware failure, cyberattack or user
www.intelligentciso.com
|
Issue 14
The biggest threat to data availability is an
outage across a company’s IT provision.
Given the complexity of data management
ecosystems, with many businesses
now exploring hybrid IT and multi-cloud
strategies, IT departments have more
plates to keep spinning than ever before.
This can also be seen as a blessing.
In the age of the cloud, businesses are
not reliant on a single point of failure
and can create virtual backups to
remote locations for every packet of
data they produce.
This has to be balanced against
the privacy protocols and value of
certain data, as well as considerations
such as budgetary constraints and
business priorities.
To strike that balance, businesses can
ensure that data is available at all times
by having a robust cloud backup and
disaster recovery strategy in place.
After all, some data is more important to
backup than other data. Mission-critical
data and applications should be backed
up continuously. Unplanned downtime is
referred to as such because it can strike
at any time.
Solutions such as Backup-as-a-service
(BaaS) and Disaster Recovery-as-a-
service (DRaaS) provide continuous
protection to business continuity.
Using op-ex based pricing, the ‘x as
a service’ model allows businesses to
pay for services based on what they
use, rather than making restrictive
capital investments up-front which lead
to IT wastage.
Crucially, organisations need to see
their backup and recovery services
as a fundamental part of their wider
data management and cloud strategy.
Veeam Availability Suite provides
a holistic solution for backup and
replication to the cloud and disaster
recovery, delivering availability across all
workloads – virtual, physical and cloud –
from a single management console.
Awareness of the value of data is on
the up, so IT managers should take a
moment to reflect whether their backup
and recovery strategy is fit for purpose
and in line with their business continuity
needs. Given that the demands on
data availability in the digital business
continue to evolve, having a future-
proofed infrastructure is a must for
modern enterprises. u
To strike that
balance, businesses
can ensure that data
is available at all
times by having a
robust cloud backup
and disaster recovery
strategy in place.
39