Major IT Solutions for Business Data Backup
When it comes to the all-important decision of how to ensure data backup & protection, two main IT solutions are available for users to choose between: Tape storage and cloud storage. Both data storage options have their pros and cons, as well as additional considerations to inform the ultimate decision. With this in mind, you should be able to best match your data storage or backup preferences with your organization’s digital business needs or your personal preferences, respectively.
Data Backup via Tape
Given its long tenured history as the standard tool, tape is the most familiar and trusted backup data storage medium. However, its longevity has also led to concerns over whether its technology is being fully utilized to ensure the fastest access, recovery time, and most efficient data management. Despite tapes capabilities compared against modern backup storage approaches, tape backups are still the most widely used platform. In fact, 90% of Fortune 500 companies and 59% of all organizations use tape as their primary form of data backup.
If you choose to employ Tape for your organization’s digital data backup, there are a number of benefits you can expect: a massive storage space for your data (up to 15 terabytes), easy recovery (due to linear tape file systems), and a reliable storage solution.
Some other factors to consider regarding tape backup:
- Additional costs: Hardware (components such as tape drives, libraries), media, software, and support all of which can significantly impact the total cost of ownership of this type of backup solution.
- Application dependence: tape backups are often built around proprietary technology, leading to potential problems with scalability and dependency upon a particular solution provider.
Data Backup Using the Cloud
In addition to tape backup, businesses, and individuals for that matter, can choose to store their data using cloud-based backup. With the Cloud’s capability for end-to-end encryption, as well as the ability to automatically and continuously backup data as it’s created, many organizations have opted in to cloud backup solutions.
The Cloud features impressive scalability and flexibility for growing storage sets, as well as limiting management requirements for small and mid-sized IT support departments through automation and continuous backups. As a result, these processes are greatly eased and significantly simplified for those managing and monitoring the backup system.
Additional cloud backup factors to consider:
- Compliance:
- Laws may prohibit transmission of data out of the country.
- Data de-duplication, whereby redundant copies of data are removed to reduce storage volume and overhead, can be viewed as changed data in compliance terms.
- Standard API: An API may provide a standard user interface, however IT pros may be required to implement a new storage solution and integrate existing flows of data into the provider’s API.
- Portability: How easy would it be to change providers? Will it be simple to move data from the cloud to your servers or to a different cloud service?
Key Features to Evaluate Backup and Restore Solutions
Whether you ultimately decide on Tape or Cloud-based data protection, there are three primary restore requirements to keep in mind in an effort to accurately evaluate your business’ data backup and restore IT solutions:
- Performance – Restoration guidelines advise a solution that is WAN-optimized, while leveraging advanced data compression and multi-threaded data transfer capabilities to promptly move large data sets quickly and securely over the Internet.
- Security – Cloud backup solutions must support the proper encryption and meet security standards. Additionally, both in flight and at rest encryption must be supported to ensure that data can be securely sent online.
- Support – Customers will, almost inevitably, require at least some support. The potential and minimum costs you’re likely to incur for support require consideration.
Eaton & Associates IT Managed Services Offers Data Backup Solutions
With all the talk about “the cloud” and cloud based solutions, it can be difficult to know what the right choice is for you and your business. We can perform an analysis of your requirements, propose appropriate solutions and smoothly migrate you to those solutions.
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Eaton & Associates, based in the Bay Area for more than 28 years, we provide IT Support Services & Products to a wide range of clients, including Government, Enterprise, Small and Medium Business and Non-Profit Organizations. Services include: Managed IT Services, Professional IT Solutions, and IT Project Management & IT Consulting. Eaton & Associates is a strategic partner with most technology vendors such as HP Enterprise & Aruba Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Nutanix, Nimble Storage, Cisco, Rubrik, Dropbox for Business, Dell, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Apple, and many more top technology vendors.
