What is an Air-gapped Copy of Backup Data?
Veritas Alta™ SaaS Protection is an Azure-based data protection solution that backs up customer data over the cloud. Azure, by default, provides some level of data replication, which replicates backup data over the same or different geographical data centers.
If data is removed or deleted from the backup data, the same deletion will be reflected in these replicated copies. This is where an air-gapped copy of backup data makes a difference.
The term "air-gapped copy" means an immutable copy of the backup data separate from the default data replication solutions provided by the cloud provider. To count as an air-gap copy, the data copy must be isolated so it can't be directly accessed or managed by the backup solution.
Need for Insulated Copy of Backup Data:
An air-gapped copy of backup data can be a part of a ransomware protection strategy, regulatory requirement, disaster recovery (DR) copy, industry standard, protection against an outage at the cloud service provider's end, rogue user activity, or some strategy to not rely completely on a single cloud storage bucket for all your backup data.
Apart from that, cloud providers offer data replication benefits based on a subscription which applies to SaaS-based data backup solutions. As mentioned above, these replicas can't be considered a secure backup copy from Disaster recovery point of view and propagation of any data deletion is completely out of your control.
Veritas ASP Solution for Insulated Copy of Backup:
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection can create that air-gapped copy of your backup data through an add-on functionality called Extra Data Backup. This provides a true replica of the backup data in secondary storage with various control options like control over synchronization of item deletion. Extra Data Backup offers a choice of various storage destinations including the option of on-premises storage.
A customer who wants to use the Extra Data Backup option needs a one-time configuration from the Veritas team based on the chosen backup destination for the backup data that will be replicated.
Supported Extra Data Backup Destinations:
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection's Extra Data Backup provides you an option to choose the following storage destinations:
- Azure Blob Storage
Could be the same Azure subscription or the Customer’s own subscription, It also supports configuring any Storage Tier as a destination should not be the same as the original backup tier.
- AWS S3 on Cloud.
- A supported AWS S3-compatible on-premises device.
Key Features:
- Unlike replicated copy of backup where deletes get propagated automatically with backup, here we can control the propagation of deletion of data in the secondary backup.
- Flexibility of selecting secondary storage Azure region.
- On top of recovering data from secondary backup, you can even recover a specific set of items to primary backup, A level of granular control.
- Option to have secondary storage on-premises or in the cloud.
Comparison with Azure Storage Replication:
For each configured Azure blob storage, Veritas Alta SaaS Protection uses some blob storage replication level based on the configuration (Azure Storage Redundancy Options).
Azure data replication provides faster recovery time, but the Extra Data Backup option provides some additional benefits over Azure storage replication like:
- Control over the propagation of data deletion.
- Choice of storage destinations
- Use of the default archive tier for data storage saves some cost.
Conclusion:
For whatever reason you need an air-gapped copy of the backup data on-premises (for example, for protection against a rogue administrator’s actions or accidental deletion), Veritas Alta SaaS Protection's Extra Data Backup option provides a nice solution for all such problems, with a lot of configuration flexibility.
You can talk to the sales team for more details on the Extra Data Backup option.
Click here to learn more about data protection offered by Veritas Alta SaaS Protection.
