Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions

How to select the most appropriate Backup and Recovery technology solution

Covenco have selected a number of technologies that enable us to design and deliver solutions that satisfy a broad spectrum of customer requirements. The criteria for selection of any specific solution is dependent upon a number of factors. 

The first questions are simply to define the type of backup process that suits your organisation and budget.  For smaller organisations you may consider an OnLine Backup Service, i.e. where you backup to a Service Provider who holds copies of your data and will enable you to recover files over the Internet, plus deliver a disk to your site if you lose a greater volume of data or a complete server. This type of service is paid on a cost per GB per month. 

Or would you prefer an In-house solution where you have the advantages of Local Recovery at LAN Speed.  The latter is usually configured to include an Off-site replication to an external DR Vault and is coupled with SLAs built round a formal Disaster Recovery Contract.  When we sit down with a prospective customer, we take account of all the factors below as each will have an impact on the final selection of your solution.

• The Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives as defined by the business
• Is there a requirement for immediate High Availability for priority Servers?
• How many servers and what volumes of data?
• What is the rate of data growth per month?
• How much of this data consists of non compressible file types, such as image or WAV files?
• What is the largest volume of files on each server?
• What are the sizes of the larger databases and the email database?
• How many laptops are included within the scope of the project?
• The mix of operating systems and software applications.
• Is it a wholly or partially virtualised environment?
• What are the medium term plans to Virtualise the server estate?
• The number of office locations that house local servers.
• Are any of these locations overseas?
• What is the available bandwidth between sites?
• Is there a requirement to backup all remote office data to a central Vault at Head office and then replicate to an off-site DR Vault?
• Does the customer require a fully self contained in-house solution with both Local and Remote recovery capabilities ..or
• A Local backup & recovery Vault, which then replicates to one of the Covenco DR Centres
• What are the required data Retention Periods?
• Is there a long term archiving requirement?

When we have completed this assessment, we will propose a solution architecture that meets the essential criteria and then install the solution for a trial period on selected servers. This will provide invaluable information on the efficiencies of the backup procesess, the rate of data growth, the impact of de-duplication and Block Level backup. We will then take the customer's staff through a series of recovery exercises, which will enable them to quantify the time and resources required for varying levels of data or server loss.