Technical Brief January 2008
Continuous Data Protection Offers Viable Alternative to Traditional Backup Methods
For many business data protection means scheduled backups performed only once a day, typically on a tape drive. In this situation, the data protected is only as good as the last backup. In other words, if data is backed up every 24 hours and the disaster strikes mid-day, all the new data created since the last backup is lost. However, as data volumes continue to grow at nearly 40% to 50% each year, it becomes increasingly difficult for IT personnel to backup mission critical data in acceptable time frames.
For some businesses the need continuous access critical data for customers, to operate the business, losing any data can translate to thousands of dollars lost. In order to recover the data, it can take up to 6 or more hours of personnel time, depending on the time lapse between the last backup and the recovery. According to Gartner Research, two out of five companies do not survive a catastrophic blow to their systems and data (fire, flood, etc). A single incident of data loss costs businesses an average of $10,000 (PwC/DTI Information Security Breaches Survey 2002).
Continuous data protection (CDP) is becoming a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional scheduled back up. With CDP there is no scheduled backup. Instead, anytime something is written to a disk it is automatically backed up, and a “storage snapshot” is taken of the file change. The snapshots are then recorded on electronic log or journal.
The primary advantage of CDP is that data recovery is nearly instantaneous. Plus, because each data change is recorded into a digital journal, IT personnel can also examine the journal to solve a host of problems, including lost files, corrupted or mutilated data. It also takes less time to investigate than it does with tradition tape backup.
CDP also has other advantages; specifically regarding staffing and security. When it comes to staffing, because CDP is automated, it eliminates the time-consuming storage management tasks and frees up staff to focus on business-critical tasks. In the case of a virus or malware, CDP offers an extra layer of security by allowing IT staff to easily roll back to find clean versions of damaged files.
No solution is ‘one size fits all.’ Each business is unique so each business’ backup and disaster recovery plan will be different. Depending on your business, a combination of backup capabilities may be best suited to protect various levels of data – from the utmost critical data to keep the business running to data the is less essential to business operations. The key to business continuity and disaster recovery planning is to first understand the impact an outage, loss or major disaster will have on your business and then pick the right procedures and tools to minimize that impact.
If you’re interested in continuous data protection or other types of data backup for your business, Spirinet Technology Services can help you find and implement the best solution to meet your business needs. For more information, please see www.spirinet.com or call 1-877-DIAL-MSP.
