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March 31: World Backup Day

Blog
March 30, 2021

World Backup Day began in 2011 and was started by a digital consultant named Ismail Jadun. For 10 years now, the day has been celebrated across the globe on March 31st.

Why has March 31st been chosen for World Backup Day? As the day before April Fool’s Day, you would be a fool to not backup your data!

While World Backup Day is a great reminder to backup the data we store on our personal phones, laptops, and other devices, it is also important to consider how your organization could be impacted by data loss and consider your enterprise backup data.

Data loss can happen for a multitude of reasons, including malware, ransomware, and other data breaches, as well as hard drive failures and other disasters that cause damage to the hard drive, like fires, floods, and other calamities. Are you protected?

Take the case of ransomware. 97% percent of data lost in a ransomware attack is regained, but it can cause an average of 16.2 days of downtime. And during this period? The average cost of downtime is $11,600 per minute — $8,000 per minute for small businesses, $74,000 for a medium-sized company, and $700,000 for a large enterprise.

What does this mean? Your backup matters!

The Importance of Backups

We rely on data to run our businesses. Losing access for a few hours or days can have a significant impact on productivity and profitability. As security and ransomware threats increase year after year, organizations need a robust backup strategy.

Nine million data records are compromised each day. While we must make every effort to keep this data secure, it must also be available. With each passing year, more and more data is created. It is estimated that the amount of data created in 2023 will surpass one trillion gigabytes, over ten times the amount of data created in 2014. And through this increasing data creation, there is also an increased risk of data loss.

How so?

  • Ransomware and other malicious attacks: Cybercrime is on the rise. It’s estimated that there will be a ransomware attack on a business every 11 seconds in 2021, up dramatically from every 40 seconds in 2016.
  • Fires, floods, and natural disasters: The California wildfires in 2020 showed us the extent of damage an out-of-control wildfire can do, and businesses are taking notice. More S&P 500 companies are flagging wildfires as a risk. Only 9 S&P companies noted the risk of wildfires in 2010, and by 2019, 37 companies had chosen to do so.
  • Other reasons: Machine failure and audits or archives are important reasons to consider backups. Also, a fast backup plan can give you a competitive edge. In the event of a disaster, the first businesses that are up and running will be able to take on the business of all the competitors who have not recovered yet.

Essentially? It pays to be prepared.

Some organizations rely on archives to do this, but archives frequently are not enough. Archives capture snapshots of data that is not actively used and stores it for retrieval. Backups are copies of data and applications that are actively used. They can restore data that is lost, corrupted, or damaged.

The main difference here is that backups can be used to restore data; archives are there just to retrieve data; they cannot be used to restore operations in the same way backups can.

Backup for Recovery

Data stored in a backup consists of all current and operational files that your organization needs — everything you are actively accessing and using. Backups are generally automated and are set up across applications, platforms, and any virtual environments.

One common — but risky — practice among organizations looking for a quick solution is to rely on remote backups for disaster recovery. One thing that should be considered, though, is the Recovery Time Objective. In a real disaster, if you have to recover petabytes of data and potentially thousands of virtual machines (VMs), this all needs to happen at the same time.

Storage arrays like the Nexsan BEAST, E-Series, and Unity solutions make backups and recovery fast, reliable, and cost-efficient. How does this happen? These storage arrays eliminate performance and management bottlenecks and even cut down on the amount of space, power, and cooling necessary.

About Backup Strategies

The fundamentals of good backup strategies tend to be the same for all businesses. It helps to have three copies of all business-critical data:

  1. The original data
  2. An on-site copy stored on a different device
  3. A physically remote copy stored elsewhere in the event of a disaster

Backups should be performed regularly to ensure you can restore your system from a recent point in time. The problem with some strategies? A complete refresh of an entire backup eats up a great deal of processing capacity and bandwidth, and as they do, they can greatly affect your system performance.

Taking snapshots can help; they require smaller amounts of data to be copied and safely stored. But just as helpful is finding the right storage solution in which to store your essential and sensitive data.

NAS versus SAN Backups

Storage area network (SAN) solutions and network-attached storage (NAS) are two network-based storage solutions, and organizations choose from these two options for different reasons. What should you know about each?

Storage Area Network

SAN refers to a dedicated, high-speed network that gives enterprises access to block-level storage. They were developed to boost application availability and performance, which is achieved by segregating storage traffic from the local area network (LAN). This allows enterprises to allocate and manage storage resources for better efficiency.

How does this happen? Instead of relying on isolated storage capacities across multiple servers, users rely on a shared storage capacity on their different workloads, dividing up the capacity as needed.

One of the major benefits? It is easier to manage and protect.

SAN relies on Fibre Channel connectivity and, within the operating system, SAN appears as a disk.

Network-Attached Storage

How does NAS differ from SAN? NAS ties into the network via an Ethernet connection and accesses data as files. While SAN functions a lot like a storage disk, NAS appears more like a file server.

Comparing NAS and SAN

The major difference between SAN and NAS backups has to do with the kind of data that is being stored. SAN is generally used for structured workloads like databases, and NAS works well for unstructured data like videos or images.

Most enterprises use some combination of NAS and SAN deployments, the extent of which is based on the workloads or applications. The structured data within a SAN deployment tends to be more scalable in an all-flash environment and tends to be smaller and easier to migrate.

Backup Solutions

Still unsure of how to spend your World Backup Day? At Nexsan, a StorCentric Company, we offer affordable, reliable, efficient backup solutions that can get you back in action when the unthinkable happens — all of which offer prime security and high performance. Here is what you should know about each.

Unity Hybrid Storage

Unity™ Hybrid Storage supports advanced block and file workloads. It even offers the option of all-flash configurations for even greater performance. Unity is a high-availability, hybrid solution engineered for enterprise use with flexible configurations and can work with the Assureon® active data vault for regulatory compliance from security breaches even with petabytes of data.

Unity can also connect with eighteen public clouds, including Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage, so organizations have the option for tiered file storage and hybrid cloud optimization. It can even replicate files from legacy systems.

What else does the Unity series of storage solutions offer?

  • Better total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • Easy scaling and sizeable capacity
  • Options for simple backups, replicated backups, unbreakable backups, tiered backups, tiered backups with replication, and replicated and highly available with tiered unbreakable backups.

E-Series P

The E-Series is a high-density storage system that is easy to scale and ultra-reliable. Organizations love the E-Series for its combination of low storage costs and maximum storage uptime. It is a SAN solution for structured data that was designed to stay ahead of upcoming data growth, demanding workloads, and high resiliency requirements, making it ideal for:

  • Media and entertainment
  • Government
  • Healthcare
  • Financial surveillance
  • Service providers

Within the E-Series, QLC flash for the best price and flash performance metrics.

BEAST Elite

The BEAST Elite series is also a SAN storage solution for structured data and highly reliable block storage. It increases input/outputs per second (IOPS) by 25% and, compared to older models, offers better connectivity through Fibre Channels or host ports, lowering the need for network switches.

The BEAST Elite series is dense, scalable, and reliable and was engineered for exceptional energy efficiency for even better operating costs.

Combining Nexsan Storage with Veeam

All three of these storage solution options — the E-Series, Unity, and BEAST Elite storage products — have also been qualified as Veeam Ready, which means they have exceeded Veeam’s functional and performance tests for backup and restore operations.

Veeam is the leading backup solution for cloud data management, providing one platform for a modern backup solution incorporating the hybrid cloud and keeping data secure. They fit into any environment and are consistently reliable.

The Nexsan storage solutions integration tools such as the vCenter Plugin provide easy monitoring, configuration, and provisioning of your E-Series, and BEAST Elite storage systems in VMware environments.

These storage solutions are also widely used for Commvault backups, making Nexsan’s storage systems the optimal choices for the best backup solutions on the market.

No matter which storage solution you choose for your backups, it’s important to mark World Backup Day 2021 with a step in the right direction: Protecting your enterprise data in the event of a disaster.

Whether you choose structured or unstructured, E-Series, Unity, or BEAST Elite, Nexsan is dedicated to helping you find secure, reliable, affordable backup solutions that fit your operations, your budget, and your needs. Want to learn more? Contact us today!

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