Organizations need a continuum of protection schemes that include storage array-based data protection, remote replication for recovery after a failure or disaster,and business continuity during outages and common IT maintenance procedures.
DATA PROTECTION
The first line of defense is to protect data where it is stored, and that means keeping storage units running as well as providing safety features. Backup is a basic part of data protection – simply backing up to tape can protect you from complete data loss, although restoring from tape is time consuming, difficult, and unreliable.Many organizations take snapshots and then run tape backups from them; this keeps data more available by virtually eliminating backup windows, and speeding restore, and minimizing errors.
DISASTER RECOVERY
Increasing virus and hacker attacks, hurricanes, and electrical brown-outs also remind us of how vulnerable our data is.The keywords for disaster recovery are copies and distance. For DR, you must have more than one data copy, and copies must be stored some distance away from the primary data center on different physical machines – remote replication is the standard for DR.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY
Business continuity (BC) differs from data protection and disaster recovery because it describes not only a level of protection that speeds recovery, but also a strategy that makes recovery speed less important. With business continuity, it’s not about how long it takes to get back in operation – it’s about staying in operation regardless of the failure, outage, attack, or corruption. For example, if you have a duplicate data center at another location with data copies, you can quickly bring operations online at the new location.
