NovaBACKUP Online Backup Survival Guide Data Protection White Paper

Transcription

1 NOVASTOR CORPORATION NovaBACKUP Online Backup Survival Guide Data Protection White Paper Stefan Utzinger, CEO NovaStor Mike Andrews, Managing Director NovaStor October NovaStor, all rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Features and specifications are subject to change without notice. The information provided herein is provided for informational and planning purposes only.

2 Executive Summary Always online! In today s world the Internet is pervasive and easy to access. Bandwidth has finally reached critical mass. As a result, the markets for Internet-based Cloud or Software as a Service Solutions are growing exponentially. An increasing number of service providers have expanded their managed service offering to include applications like Backup as a Service to attract new business and satisfy the ever expanding requirements of their core customers. This whitepaper addresses service providers and end-users with the following topics: For service providers Explain the beauty of the Backup as a Service market Why Backup as a Service will continue to grow For end-users Why online backup should be part of your data protection strategy How to select the right online backup provider As a summary: This whitepaper is presented to help service providers gain new customers and help end users SURVIVE the most common pitfalls of critical data protection. It explains why online backup is an integral part of any data protection strategy and provides you with important information that can help educate your end users on the value of utilizing an online backup service. It will also help guide you in your selection of the right software vendor to custom fit YOUR business Introduction As a service provider considering entry into this market or wanting to upgrade your current solution, you re presented by what seems to be thousands of options. Picking the right partner and navigating through the mass of vendors is a difficult and daunting task. You must consider your market, how your vendor partner complements your model (you should not change your business philosophy for a solution), core features, pricing models, quality and speed of technical support/professional services, reference accounts and basic industry knowledge. Plain and simple, critical data needs to be available at all times. After almost 20 years, online/offsite backup solutions have become extremely reliable and are now no longer considered just an option. They now represent a critical component within what constitutes the best practices of data protection. As an end user, you should carefully consider your data protection strategy: Best practice is to have a local AND offsite copy of your most critical data. There is definitely a time and place where 2009 NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 2

3 one is of more beneficial, but there are obvious risks associated with just depending on only a single method locally (natural disasters, theft, etc.) offsite (failure to access an Internet connection or a complete system failure). The best solution a service provider can offer is the one that end users will actually use. Typically, this equates to intuitive, novice-friendly complexity with minimal end user interaction. Ideally both local and offsite solutions are available within a single interface to decrease the learning curve. The application must also employ simple communication methods that comfort the end user when their backup is successful and alerts them when there are issues. Backup as a Service will continue to grow Based on IDC research the market for Cloud services will grow more than 250% between 2008 and 2012 the share of storage will grow from approximately $ 800M USD to $ 5,500M USD, a growth rate of more than 650%. There are many reasons for this. Catastrophes happen every minute No computer is 100% protected against natural disasters, burglaries, end user error or internal damage - in business it is critical to save data in different locations and have the ability to restore or access data quickly. Studies estimate that 60% of all business will not survive a data-loss if the data can not be restored within 3 days. Offering a professional online backup service to your customers ensures that their data is secured offsite and can be restored immediately when needed NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 3

4 Backup is essential, but never 100% error free Most companies view backup as an essential IT operation. To successfully restore data, frequent and reliable backups are necessary. Protecting business-critical data is a very time consuming and capital intensive process and never error-free. Completing backup within your allotted time (your end user s backup window ), making sure the management of your offsite tape storage is kept up to date and trying to keep your remote locations protected creates countless headaches for the IT operations of your end users. Online backup removes this burden and delivers data-protection at an affordable price. It is not only the cost of storage that the end user needs to consider if they elect to remain with legacy methods of data protection. They need to consider staff to manage the storage, the energy and costs associated with running their own storage facility, cost of media and media management, backup verification processes, remote employee support and the extra time associated with recovering from individual and complete system failures. Online backup is the only affordable data protection for end users The definition of critical information in today s world has taken on a completely new meaning. Small business end users continue to store their key business and financial related data on their computer, but with the proliferation of digital photography, personal videos and s, an entirely new emotional element has been introduced. Most end users today don t back up! The majority of the ones that do still utilize basic drag and drop copy functionality to save their data to a local external hard drive, or worse, to a different location on their computer s internal storage devices. They see this as a legitimate backup process that is, until they can t restore or in many cases even find their critical files. Many times the value of data is recognized only after the point of no (data) return. The copy function is not reliable and external hard drives can and most likely will at some point crash. What can an end user do to increase their odds of surviving a catastrophe? State of the art online backup applications offer a combination of both local and online professional quality backup. This gives the end user peace of mind and the needed protection for their business and private data. Companies often fail to protect remote PCs Critical corporate information is not only stored in the corporate office, but very often in remote locations, home-offices or on notebooks for the mobile workforce. To install, manage and support local installations of complex backup solutions is not only very expensive, it also requires substantial IT resources. Online backup solutions administered by service providers not only protects end user data to a professional highly secure data center environment, but they can also direct the end users most important company data to their own corporate data center NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 4

5 Private data kills the company s data-center The growing amount of private data being stored on most company computers is increasing dramatically and so are the costs associated with protecting it. IDC estimates that by 2012 employees private data will be responsible for more than 70% of all data in the company s corporate data center. The chart shows the already visible trend until To avoid being part of this statistic, a best practice solution would ensure that employees have the means to protect their important personal information locally on a device of their choice and then only transfer critical business files to the corporate data center. This is a win-win for both employee and company with an added bonus that the end user does not need to learn two separate applications to make this happen. Potential cost savings and other resources (staff and time) will be substantial. Backup as a Service provider selection criteria Physical reach of the online backup provider The geographic presence of the online backup provider and the location where the data is stored are very important. To make certain that there will be no legal violations, European data should be stored in a data center in Europe and data from the US in the US. It should be clear, that YOUR data is not stored or synchronized with any third party or foreign country your service provider should make this transparent to you. Also, in case of an emergency where timing is critical, it is important that the online backup provider is within physical reach to help restore the data if necessary. When it comes to product support, being local decreases the risk of cultural or language misunderstandings. You should aim to have your online backup provider operating in the same geographic area and time zone. Support and availability of additional services Does your service provider offer live support? Or is it only via ? Some service providers offer additional services like onsite installation of the software or training to the end-users. Especially in corporate environments, it can be helpful if the service provider also checks your local backup and recovery infrastructure to improve your ability to recover data quickly. Sometimes it may also be necessary, for you or your service provider to have direct live support from the online backup software vendor. You need an online backup software vendor that will stand 2009 NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 5

6 behind their product and be available for your immediate needs. In the case of a data loss emergency this can be a very important and critical to your recovery time. Ask your service provider where his online backup software vendor is located and if he can get live support in case of an emergency! Balanced Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Does your service provider offer a fair and balanced Service Level Agreement? Typical must haves are redundant storage to multiple locations, uptime guarantees, backups of your backup (archiving), guaranteed support response times, the ability to represent your product requests or deal with bugs in the software, support the latest operating systems and mainstream applications. The SLA should include where the data is stored and that this is a state-of the art data center, which is under continued maintenance. State of the art online backup solution Things to look for in a state of the art online backup solution: Easy to use application Offers both workstation and server backup. Supports applications like Microsoft Exchange, SQL and open file support. Easy scheduling. Incremental backups at a block or binary level. Constant monitoring of the system. An important advantage is if they offer local backup and disaster recovery there is no need to operate with different screens if you need to make a local backup and the disaster recovery is the easiest and fastest way to restore the data in case of an emergency. They should also be willing to offer you trial licensing so you can fully test that the solution is the right one for YOU. More important than the pure feature set is the simplicity and reliability of the system. The costs for training the end-user can be much higher than costs for additional storage or bandwidth. The solution from the online backup vendor your service provider is offering should be used by hundreds of service providers, to ensure that the solution is the market standard and that the solution will be supported in the future. The company behind the solution should have a long history, as there have been several new faces in this industry that have come and gone over the last few years. Even if today s feature sets match all your requirements, it is important that if you need more comprehensive functionalities in the future, that you can remain with the same vendor. It should be transparent to you, who develops the online backup solution so you can check if the company is financially viable and whether they re based in your region and can be easily contacted. Security For security reasons, that service provider and the online backup software vendor should be two different companies. Otherwise, there is always a risk that the service provider can read you data this is not the case if these are two separate companies NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 6

7 Transparent pricing model There are different price models on the market. Most of them are based on gigabytes per month some service providers offer fixed prices per machine (computer) and additional charges every gigabyte over a certain barrier. Some service providers charge for transactional fees (like Amazon S3) or for every restore or for live support. It is very important that you understand the pricing model, so that you can estimate the real costs associated with the service being offered. Possibility to share data between different Online Backup Provider Companies and private end users have varying qualities of data. Business critical data carries a different quality than more emotional data like private pictures. Is should be possible, that you create different backup sets and have the ability to send the data to different locations. Maybe you decide to store your business critical data with a premium, local, service-oriented service provider and your private data with a service provider who charges lower costs per gigabyte. Easy to switch your online backup provider In the case where your online backup provider changes their pricing model, goes out of business or you are just unhappy with the service, it must be easy to switch the online backup provider. Reliable vendor of the online backup solution Normally the service providers gives first and second level support to their online backup customers, but in case of an emergency or on special requests (like integration in the corp. environment of the end-user) the service provider needs support from the software vendor. Are they available to you? The software vendor should offer live support and be easy to reach. Software vendors should operate in the same geographic region as you and must follow the same legal and business rules, which can be important in some cases. Always take the time to do the research and understand the company behind the solution you trust your most critical data to. About NovaStor NovaStor is a pioneer and leading international provider of software solutions for data protection and availability. NovaStor provides service providers and corporations with solutions focused on local and Cloud/SaaS backup, restore and retention of business critical data. Clients include home, mobile, SMB users, service providers as well as many leading international corporations. NovaStor has offices in the US (California), Switzerland (Rotkreuz) and Germany (Hamburg) and is represented globally through thousands of partnerships NovaStor. All Rights Reserved NovaBACKUP xsp 7