According to Arcserve Southern Africa, a well-defined disaster recovery plan is crucial for minimising downtime and ensuring operations are returned to normal, quickly.
“Any such plans should also incorporate a data backup strategy – including recovery point and time objectives (RPOs and RTOs) – plus detailed procedures for data restoration, system recovery, business continuity and categorisation and classification of data,” says Byron Horn-Botha, Business Unit Head Arcserve Southern Africa.
“Regular testing and updating of disaster recovery plans are essential processes for ensuring it will continue to be effective as your business evolves,” he adds.
Horn-Botha stresses the implementation of an effective backup solution. “Data backups are fundamental to achieving data resilience and the 3-2-1-1 backup strategy is the best way to ensure your backups are always safeguarded and available. It’s a simple concept – keep three copies of your data (one primary and two backups), with two copies stored locally in two formats and one copy stored offsite in the cloud or secure storage. The last one stands for immutable storage, where your backups are saved in a write-once-read-many-times format that cannot be altered or deleted, says Horn-Botha.
He notes immutability differs from encryption in that there is no key, so there should be no way to “read” or reverse the immutability. “That gives you a last line of defence against disasters.”
Horn-Botha confirms the cloud offers unmatched scalability and flexibility. “Cloud services like AWS also provide solutions like S3 Object Lock, an immutable format that lets you take advantage of the cloud without sacrificing security. Cloud-based solutions like Arcserve SaaS Backup offer you rapid recovery with automated backups and replication to multiple data centres so that even if a local disaster strikes, your data remains accessible.
He stresses ensuring data resilience with SaaS backup doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. “Arcserve SaaS Backup is the most cost-effective solution available, with a single price per seat that includes all SaaS data protection functionalities.” This solution also offers immutable storage capability in the cloud to again align to the 3-2-1-1 best practices.
Harnessing the benefits of tape backup and air gapping
“It may surprise you to learn that magnetic tape was created in 1928. However, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the technology was applied to data storage on mainframe computers. So why are we talking about a technology that is nearly 100 years old? The answer to that is simple – it works and very well indeed. Tape is an excellent option for long-term data archiving and is especially effective for offsite, air-gapped storage – whether you use a virtual or physical air gap. Tape is also very cost-effective for large volumes of data. That may be why the global tape market is projected to grow to nearly $4.24 billion by 2027, a CAGR of more than 7%. So, tape is not only alive and well, but is growing and, notably, Arcserve offers unique options for immutability in the form of our OneXafe immutable storage and support for other immutable cloud storage options. The options are endless, and this flexibility is what organisations require to stay ahead of the curve without breaking the bank.
“With your data air-gapped and stored offsite on tape, you have one more reliable option for disaster recovery if all of your other options fail, namely, Arcserve’s Unified Data Protection (UDP). This software includes extensions that deliver high availability and support tape backups. It offers much more than tape support, it also protects against data loss and extended downtime across your cloud, local, virtual and SaaS-based workloads. You can also reduce your downtime from days to minutes and validate your RTOs, RPOs and service level agreements (SLAs) with automated testing and granular reporting. All this combines to provide a comprehensive disaster recovery plan,” Horn-Botha concludes.
Written by: Byron Horn-Botha, Business Unit Head, Arcserve Southern Africa
Originally featured here