21 Backup is not just going through the motions to put a copy of data in a dark closet–it’s really all about data recovery. If digital assets are lost or damaged, can you get them back? Only if the operation was done properly–completed–and it is available and easy to locate when you need it. Petabyte-scale backups used to be a rarity, but the sheer amount of data generated, along with advancing analytics and AI modeling, not to mention regulatory requirements, mean there’s more data to keep; more to back up. Choose a robust and efficient target for backups. Backup and recovery go hand in hand, so the target storage for your process must be easy to write to and recover data from—smoothly and efficiently. And, of course, it has to scale with data growth, seamlessly. Interruptions in the backup process can cause its failure, which means starting over or, worse, a missed backup. And, of course, recovery has to be quick and worry-free. With businesses being 24×7, backup windows have diminished, and fast restores are a top priority. Look for solutions that can scale throughput to support multiple backup and restore streams simultaneously, to ensure the least possible impact. Availability is paramount. Once written, you need to be able to rely on the data being there, intact and available. Data durability is a key consideration in choosing a target. Disk-based backups can offer multiple durability models, depending upon your needs and the value of the data being backed-up. Automating cross-regional replication (yes—no tapes on trucks), or using highly-efficient erasure coding algorithms to safeguard data without the overhead of full replication, ensures that data is kept available—and intact—for any possible future need. And if that need does arrive, retrieval is quick and easy too: no tape search (or worse, lost tapes), no fear of degradation, no delays. And recovery is what backup is all about isn’t it? Interface with your backup software of choice. A backup storage target that can interface easily and seamlessly with your software of choice, be it a new or legacy solution, makes IT easier. In fact, a target that accommodates multiple software solutions puts you in a great ‘evolutionary’ position. Don’t want to change everything at once; that works. Change the target from tape to disk-based, and then step-back and assess backup solutions later, if necessary, knowing that the target has all of the major solutions tested and in production elsewhere. Of course, if silo-breaking is a goal (and where is it not), such a flexibility helps consolidate and simplify backup storage right out of the gate, and standardizing on one backup solution can come later. You know where we were headed with this: Scality’s got your back (or backup, as the case may be). Our scalability, durability and data availability are well-recognized by our stellar customer base as well as all of the major analysts. Having both native file and object interfaces makes Scality RING compatible with pretty much any backup solution you might choose, but, still, we’ve taken the time to test and certify with a broad range of them—46 as of today, in fact, but we haven’t stopped testing, so look here to see the latest ISV compatibility list for backup and other applications. Read more on how Scality RING excels as a backup target. And if you missed last month’s write-up on how a major international financial institution does their petabyte-scale backups with Scality, have a look now. Have a happy and safe World Backup Day.
