Factors of Business Centric Data Protection

Intro: What is backup and why its important

Section 1: Business needs for backup

Section 2: Local Backup Explained

Section 3: Online Backup Explained

Section 4: Disaster Recovery Explained

Appendix A: Backup Terminology

Appendix B: Backup Worksheet

Appendix C: Formulas and Calculations

References

Section 1:  Business Needs for Backup

Running a business in today’s day and age requires quite a bit of business critical information being stored and accessed via computer related machines and/or appliances such as Point of Sales, medical lab workstations, and an infinite number of other devices.  Many of these workstations and devices either gather and create data onto a centralize fileserver or stores the data locally on the system.  Studies say that recreating production data can cost upwards to tens of thousands of dollars not just out of pocket expenses but time and productivity that cannot be reclaimed from data regeneration.  This is the most common need for a backup, to ensure that large expenditures are not incurred to regenerate previous data.

A recent study discloses it takes 19 days and cost in excess $17,000 to re-enter just 20 megabytes worth of sales and marketing data.  Retrieving accounting records is even worse; they require over 21 days of work and cost over $19,000 to re-type.  Can you business sustain that expense and keep your doors open?

Statistics about Leading Causes of Data Loss [Derived from Ontrack research]

Despite technological advances in the reliability of magnetic storage media, data loss continues to rise, making data recovery more important than ever. Ontrack engineers have identified three trends that are leading to this increase in lost data.

1. More data is being stored in smaller spaces. Today's hard drives store 500 times the data stored on the drives of a decade ago. Increasing storage capacities amplify the impact of data loss, making mechanical precision more critical.
   
2. Data has become more mission-critical. Hospital patient records. A graduate school thesis. Personal finance and tax information. Payroll records. Users today are storing more information electronically than ever. The loss of mission critical data can have staggering financial, legal and productivity ramifications on businesses and home users alike.
   
3. Backup tools and techniques are not 100% reliable. Most computer users rely on backups as their safety net in the event of data loss (a recommended practice). Ontrack research indicates that 80 percent of its data loss customers regularly back up their data, only to find them less than adequate at the critical moment they need to restore them. Backups assume that hardware and storage media are in working order; that the data is not corrupted, and that your backup is recent enough to provide full recovery. In reality, hardware and software do fail and backups don't always contain current enough data.

Leading Causes of Data Loss

Hardware or System Malfunctions (44 percent of all data loss)

Possible Symptoms

• Error message stating the device is not recognized
• Previously accessible data suddenly gone
• Scraping or rattling sound
• Hard drive not spinning
• Computer hard drive doesn't function

Examples

• Electrical failure
• Head/media crash
• Controller failure

Preventive Measures

• Protect electrical components by using computers in a dry, shaded, dust-free area
• Protect against power surges with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
• Do not shake or remove the covers on hard drives or tapes.

Human Error (32 percent of all data loss)

Possible Symptoms

• Previously accessible data suddenly gone
• Message similar to "File Not Found"

Examples

• Accidental deletion or drive format
• Trauma caused by drop or fall

Preventive Measures

• Never attempt any operation, like installations or repairs, with which you don't have experience
• Avoid moving your computer, especially when it's in operation

Software Corruption (14 percent of all data loss)

Possible Symptoms

• System messages relating to memory errors
• Software application won't load
• Error message stating data is corrupted or inaccessible

Examples

• Corruption caused by diagnostic or repair tools
• Failed backups
• Configuration complexity

Preventive Measures

• Back up data regularly
• Use diagnostic utilities with caution

Computer Viruses (7 percent of all data loss)

Possible Symptoms

• Blank screen

• Strange and unpredictable behavior
• Error message stating
• "File Not Found" Message announcing virus appears on screen

Examples

• Boot sector viruses
• File infecting viruses
• Polymorphic viruses

Preventive Measures

• Use a good anti-virus package
• Obtain software from reputable sources
• Scan all incoming data, including packaged software, for viruses

Natural Disasters (3 percent of all data loss)

Possible Symptoms

• While floods and earthquakes have obvious symptoms, brownouts and lightning strikes often leave no clues

Examples

• Fires
• Floods
• Brownouts

Preventive Measures

• Store tested backups in an off-site location
• Install a UPS
• Don't store critical data in a flood plain

Aside from the scare of actual data loss, there are also industry specific compliancy laws that require certain levels of data protection.  HIPAA for example requires that a daily backup be created of all patient records in an encrypted format at or exceeding 128bit encryption as well as being taken offsite to avoid natural disasters and/or other physical disasters (data breach, hardware failure, etc)  These compliancy laws can be hard to adhere to and can become very complicated and online backup helps satisfy these business needs to avoid breach of compliancy that can shut down your business until you have successfully passed the audit.

To recap quickly on why business data protection should have multiple levels of protection.  Production data loss even though it may seem minimal but can cost a great deal of money, time and productivity that cannot be reclaimed from normal business efforts.  Over 75% of all data loss is preventable by simple steps of maintenance and implementation of rules and policies.  Compliancy laws are there to ensure better business practices and need to be adhered to in the chance of a compliancy audit that can result in business closure until your business meets the compliancy code.

Section 2: Local Backup Explained

Most people are familiar with the concept of backup, but are not fully aware of what proper data protection entails.  To begin with, local backup which requires a physical backup device whether it is tape,hard drive, optical media, or network storage to be present in the same physical environment that the source data resides.  This process generally requires a middleware application to managed this backup device such as DataHEALTH iBackup v10 to control the file selections, scheduled timed, device destination, and most importantly media catalog. The methods of local backup can be contained into three major categories full backup, incremental backup, and differential backup.  Combining these categories of backup can strengthen your data protection strategy as well as making it far more complex depending on the implementation.

As with local backup you have a wide range of backup devices that you can choose from, below we will define the device and provide proper usage as well as pros and cons for each device

Tape Drive

Tape Drives are still today’s fastest method of data protection.   With tape devices you drastically increase the cost of your data protection infrastructure as the tape drive itself can cost upwards to $6,000 – 7,000 for a brand new drive, and media on top of that will roughly cost in the range of $1200 – 2000 depending on the backup strategy that you define to use.  One thing to note with using tape media is that you will need to perform a media refresh at least once a year, this means reinvesting the $1200 – 2000 on new media.  This is a recommended practice to ensure data integrity on the tape media itself as well as keeping your tape drive healthy.

Pros

• Properly configured is the fastest backup method
• Media is easy to transport
• Straight-forward media management

Cons

• Very costly to implement
• Initial configuration can be quite complex
• Media is expensive and generally not readily purchasable (i.e. Can’t go to Best Buy to purchase media)
• Can be difficult to troubleshoot issues and errors

Optical Media

Optical media is a fairly straight forward method of data protection as it uses familiar technology such as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray media and devices.  This is also a very cost effective method of implementing local backup assuming that your production data does not exceed 4.25GB incase of leveraging DVD technology.  It is suggested that you only use single write media to ensure data integrity and consistency.  With DVD technology this can be a very minimal expense which should come in the area of sub $200/year for media if you are performing a backup everyday.  The nice thing about optical media for backup purposes is that more than likely you already have the hardware in place to start implementing this type of strategy.

Pros

• You already have the hardware
• Media is cheap and easy to transport
• Media has no moving parts
• Familiar technology

Cons

• Media can be compromised easily
• Large amount of media needs to be managed
• Small storage capacity

Hard Drive

Hard Drive backup is a newer player in the data protection arena where the devices have came into a transportable and manageable medium in the past 3 years.  External hard drives are a cost effective way to perform backups that require a great amount of storage space for each backup. There are many ways to implement this method of backup Hot Swap drives and external USB/Firewire drives are the most common ways of implementation of hard drive backup.  Recently the price of hard drive storage has drastically came down in price depending on the backup rotation that you define this method can cost from $100 - $2000. 

Pros

• Cheap large storage capacity
• Fairly fast data transfer rates
• Easy to configure
• No significant need for middleware application

Cons

• Lots of moving parts
• awkward media transport
• Difficult media management
• subject to data corruption much easier without physical notifications
• hard to troubleshoot when errors occur
• Compromised data can occur easily

Network Storage

[Will re-visit later]