Remote Backup 7-14-2009

BlackInk IT has provided the design, implementation and ongoing administration of data protection systems for numerous organizations over the years. Our clients frequently ask me about the new, cool fire and forget Internet based remote backup versus the old, boring unreliable tape backup. The remote backup market has gotten a lot of press lately and many people feel they will miss the boat if the don’t jump on now. It seems like an easy question, right?  Is this for me or not? To get to the answer ponder several question regarding the value and impact of the data in your organization Do this prior to deciding the means and methods of protecting it. What data do you have? How valuable is that data to your organization?  How much data can you stand to lose before it impacts your business? How long can you be without your data before it impacts your business? How long do you need to retain your old data? Mix the answer to these questions with an in-depth knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of the tools and technologies available for data protection. You will not only find the answer to what types of backups will make sense for you; you will also be a long way into developing a plan to protect and recover your data in the event of unforeseen disaster.

Right off the bat lets dispel the myth that one technology works and is easy and the other is not. Properly designed, implemented and administered both online and local backups work reliably within their limitations.

What data do you have?
The first step is to quantify the types, locations, amounts and growth of your data.  You will probably have many different types of data. Email, user accounts, spreadsheets, documents, presentations and databases are a few of the types. Each type has unique properties, amounts and protection strategies. The knowledge of each type of data is crucial to planning your backup strategy. We do data repository workbooks to identify all of the silos of data that include the type, location and amount of data in each.
Some type of data like a Microsoft SQL database or Microsoft Exchange server require special “agents” to be able to be backed up. Some online backup programs and services do not offer these special ‘agents’.

The knowledge of each type of data is crucial to planning your backup strategy. We do data repository workbooks to identify all of the silos of data that include the type, location and amount of data in each.

How valuable is your data?
The simple questions are how much would it cost to recreate your data if was even possible? If you could not recreate your data could your organization survive? How many hours would it take to re-enter your clients, contacts, invoices, drawings, estimates quotes, etc?  The answer is usually: it would take a lot of time and money and we cannot survive without it. Look at each type of data silo you identified after completing the first question and evaluate the value each one.

Different backup strategies have different costs. Most online backup systems charge by the amount of data stored. The cost for online business backup run about $.50-$2 per Gigabyte (GB) of data stored per month.  The cost for an 800GB tape is about $70 or about $.09 per GB for the media. Of course for the tape you also need a tape drive. A current HP LTO4 Drive for the 800GB tape is currently listed for $2549.

How much data can you stand to lose before it impacts your business?
The restore point objective (RPO) is the point in time that you can restore your data to in the event that your systems explodes. Look at your silos, is last night good enough? Is 2 minutes too long? It depends on the data. A credit card company cannot lose any data their RPO is the last verified transaction. Your case may not be that extreme but if you lost your accounting data from what point would you need it back? Is last week good enough? Last night?  Evaluate this for all of your data silos.

In a typical tape backup system that does a full backup every night the RPO would be the last nightly backup. Local tape strategy is not so good if you have a low RPO tolerance, backups that utilize continuous data protection (CDP), can have a very low PRO. A CDP backup runs all of the time, when data is changed the change is automatically backed up. Many online backups utilize CDP.

How long can you be without your data before it impacts your business?
The restore time objective (RTO) is how long you expect to be without your data while the disaster plan is executed. In the event of a disaster you want to eventually get all of your data back, but some of that data you need back immediately to function. That report your staff wrote two years ago may be needed at some point in the future but your accounting system may need to be back online today.  

Tapes can backup and restore data quickly. In real world tests we have the HP tape drives performing at rates better than 2-1/2 GB a minute. Restoring 20GB of data would take 8 minutes at that rate. If you had a full T1 line devoted to restoring your online backup it would take 1 Day 6 Hours 54 Minutes 28.58 Seconds to copy that much data*.

*source T1 Shopper File Transfer Time Calculator http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/downloadcalculator.shtml

How long do you need to retain your old data?
Data changes. You may have one GB of email. Is your one GB of email the same one GB as last week? How about last year? Chances are that that one GB of email is different email every day. Some is added, some is deleted. Do you need to retain all of your emails and for how long? Many organizations have internal policies or external regulations that dictate if and how long data should be retained.

When determining your backup strategy the retention period will have an impact on the cost. In retention tape has a definite advantage. At 9 cents a GB tape is the long term storage champ. Every time you want to archive up to 800GB of data it will cost you $70. If you have 100GB of data that you wanted to keep for 3 years it would cost $70. To store the same 100Gb online would cost between $600 and $2400 a year.