Data centers are being remade with new technology. Virtualization and the cloud have fundamentally changed the way servers and data are managed, while the 24×7 internet and analytics have monumentally increased the importance of those servers and data. Has your backup strategy been updated to support the new ways of creating and using data?
Limitations of Traditional Backup Solutions
Virtual machines are different from physical servers. With multiple VM instances running on a single physical server, servers have much less spare processing capacity, limiting their ability to serve backup processes. Combined with the larger volumes of data, this means the time needed to complete backups has expanded even as the time available for backups is reduced.
There’s also less time for data center operations staff to oversee backups. Teams no longer have specialized backup admins, with the responsibility being handled by employees with many additional responsibilities as well. Complex, manual solutions no longer fit into the workflow in most departments. Maintaining security controls around backup data adds to the complexity.
The costs of traditional backup don’t fit with today’s budget-strapped IT departments, either. Management sees the value of investing in technology to support new applications; it’s harder to justify continually adding cold storage to archive data.
Modern Backup Software Meets the Needs of Virtualized Data Centers
Traditional backup is neither cost-effective nor technically adequate to meet the requirements of today’s data centers. If you haven’t revisited your backup solution in a while, it’s time to take a look at modern backup features that offer better support for today’s backup needs:
- Build backup strategies around snapshots so that applications don’t need to be shut down to take backups.
- Provide application consistent virtual machine backups to streamline recovery.
- Integrate backups with the cloud, reducing the need for local secondary storage and making data readily available for recovery.
- Support granular recovery options.
- Deduplicate data, minimizing storage needed.
- Use automation to increase reliability and minimize administrator responsibilities.
- Encrypt backups to ensure data is protected.
If you haven’t revisited your backup strategy in a while, dcVAST can help you assess your needs to develop a modern approach to backups that protects your data wherever it resides. Our Managed Backup service uses NetBackup to provide a comprehensive, supported approach to data backup and recovery. We can provide a complete new deployment of NetBackup or optimize your existing installation. Contact us to take a fresh look at your approach to backup and make sure it works with the new technology you now use in your data center and in the cloud.
