Data Center Backup Folsom

What do you need to know about data center backup in Folsom?

These days, it’s probably fair to say that more data centers are owned by public cloud vendors and other enterprises that are owned by SMBs. Even so, there is still a fair sprinkling of them out there and they need to be backed up appropriately. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about data center backup in Folsom.

Thinks To be Considered While Data Center Backup

1. There needs to be one person held accountable for your data center backups

Even if you’re only running a “bare-bones” data center while you complete your cloud migration, it’s important to ensure that it’s backed up appropriately and that means that it needs to be somebody’s job to ensure that happens. It’s fine if they have a team under them. In fact, it will usually be necessary to have an in-house team and/or appropriate support from an IT services vendor. It is, however, risky to assume that just assigning someone tasks as part of their role will be enough to get the job done at all, let alone properly. It needs suitable management.

2. Getting an IT services vendor on board is highly recommended

Data centers may all look much the same from the outside. From the inside, however, they’re all very different and most are both very complex and very dynamic. This makes them one of the most challenging areas of IT. In particular, it makes them prone to interoperability issues, especially after changes, even minor ones that you wouldn’t have expected to have any impact whatsoever.

The reason why dealing with interoperability issues can be challenging is that, by their very nature, they tend to fall into the cracks between vendors (both software and hardware), hence vendor support can be of limited use.

Data center backup vendors, by contrast, are vendor-neutral and will have a broad knowledge of data center environments and the issues which arise in them. They may well have encountered your issue before. Even if they don’t, they will have at least some familiarity with your particular data center environment, more than can be expected from a software vendor.

3. It’s important to have the right data center backup management solution for your needs

Hardware-based solutions and cloud-based solutions (Backup-as-a-Service) are both good choices for SMBs with light to moderate needs. They are simple, affordable, and convenient albeit in different ways. Hardware-based solutions generally come with integrated storage, making them plug-and-play options but also making them a single point of failure. BaaS solutions have no hardware to fail, but they do rely on a robust internet connection.

Most companies, even SMBs, are going to need either a software solution or a hybrid solution (which is part software and part BaaS). In fact, given the complexity of modern data centers, it’s very likely that you’ll need more than one solution to cover all your needs, let alone all your wants.

The key point to take away is that it is practically impossible to know how any given piece of software will perform in the real world until you actually test it in the real world. Product descriptions and “hands-on reviews” are all very well and can help you to narrow down your shortlist, but it’s very unlikely that anyone will be able to test software in a replica of your environment, hence the need to take external information as guidance rather than guaranteed facts.

4. Choosing the right storage for your needs

For your local backup, you have a choice of hard drives, SSDs, and tapes and for your off-site backup, you have a choice of all of these plus the cloud. Unless you have an exceptionally high budget, SSDs on their own are likely to be too expensive to use as your main solution. They can, however, work very well when partnered with tapes. The SSDs buffer, clean, and compress the data, and then the tapes provide robust and affordable storage. This can help to reduce the main issue with tapes which is that they are very slow.

Hard drives should, in theory, be a great solution as they offer decent read/write speeds at a decent price. The problem with them is that their internal mechanics are prone to breaking and that can mean either loss of data or the additional cost of a recovery operation.

The cloud, by definition, is purely an off-site solution. Some companies are still wary of trusting their data to it as it is internet-linked, but if you go with a reputable provider and keep your data encrypted then you can get excellent security at a low price and have quick access to your data.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data center backup partner in Folsom, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.

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