Knowing what information you have, knowing where you have it, protecting the important information, and being able to recover it quickly are crucial elements of any forward thinking backup strategy.
But … how do you tick all these boxes in an environment that is increasingly complex, more fragmented and changing at an almost unmanageable pace?
Let me tell you how in three powerful steps…
Step 1: Visualize your data
Allocating IT budgets and building your strategies based on a belief that your data can be allowed to grow uncontrollably is a strategic error. If this happens, your IT investments will be used merely to “keep the lights on” storing and processing …
- Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial data (or ROT); data that has little or no longer any business value
- And, Dark Data; data that is “out of sight” to your organization and whose value is yet to be identified
In fact, in our Global Databerg survey we found that global organizations hold on average 52% Dark Data, 33% ROT and (only) 15% of identifiable business critical data.
In other words … potentially you could backup 85% of data that has little or no value to your organization. Why spend more of your money and time on data that has no value? I don’t think you need me to further spell out your opportunity … tackle ROT and Dark Data; less data to backup = faster backups. You must start with building a thorough picture of your entire data house.
Veritas Information Map can help you visualize your data no matter where in your environment it is stored and find opportunities to organize and clean your data house, while reducing information risk in less than 24 hours.
Step 2: Take action to clean up your data house
Information Map aggregates metadata to build an information profile to render an organized view of your entire data house. This view allows you to better analyze your data, for example you can filter by location, server, type, size, age, user, etc. or through any combination. With this knowledge you can make informed decisions whether to retain valuable and regulated data, and (if you are brave enough) press the delete button for the rest.
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Step 3: Assume control over your data
In Step 1 and Step 2 you did the hard groundwork. You organized your data and you maybe even pressed the delete button. You established what data is critical and what data is of less importance to your organization.
Now it is time to put all that groundwork and knowledge to action …
One backup policy for all your data is not a strategy, right? Your backup strategy needs to deliver the perfect blend of agility, performance, scale and cost and it must deliver this consistently. The only way you can achieve this is with backup policies that are based on the inherent value of your data and by picking the right technology to deliver it.
In one of their recent surveys, ESG Research shared that the #1 use of Cloud is Data Backup and Archive. The #2 use is Disaster Recovery. I think these are great statistics and picture where we are heading.
I do too see Cloud more becoming part of our customers’ backup strategies, for example as an alternative to tape. If you aim for the perfect blend, then augmenting your backup strategy with Cloud almost certainly delivers agility, scale and potentially improved economics.
But … does Cloud deliver the performance (or backup/ recovery times) to support all your backup policies? The answer is … probably not – at least not consistently.
For example, if you backup your data once a day (or less), your backup copies are relatively small and your organization doesn’t demand quick restore times/ RTOs, then use of Cloud as a destination for your backup copies is an option that you can’t ignore to evaluate. However, the more frequent your backups/ RPOs, the more aggressive your RTOs, the more an appliance/ onsite backup copy becomes essential.
The use of an onsite appliance and Cloud is just one of the many Cloud use cases Veritas can help you with. This use case in particular offers you a low risk expansion of your backup strategy to the Cloud; an ideal springboard for your backup journey to the Cloud. It is low risk, because:
- You can start small and expand the use of Cloud at your own pace
- You keep your business critical data backups onsite on the Veritas NetBackup Appliance for fast recovery
- You store older, less important data backups securely in one of the leading Cloud platforms
- You do this all with unmatched visibility and control no mater where your backups reside
In NetBackup connecting to the Cloud is easy with the new high-performance NetBackup Cloud Connector. You just enter the Cloud Provider’s interoperability access key, secret access key, and choose the storage target/ bucket to authenticate. The NetBackup Cloud Storage Server Configuration Wizard will do the rest for you. It is really that straightforward.
The combination of Veritas NetBackup Appliances, Veritas Information Map and Integration with the leading Cloud Platforms provides you unmatched visibility and maximum control of your backup and restore jobs, so you can achieve your corporate standards consistently.
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