B E S T P R A C T I C E S
G U I D E
Remote Data Management & Backup with Snap EDR
operation. At the same time, since offsite data storage
is a must, a local backup to tape process at remote sites
must involve some manual intervention to remove the
backup media to the offsite storage. Online backup,
which can transmit data to another location to be
backed up either to disk or to tape, can eliminate the
need for any redundant manual effort at the remote
sites.
The Case for Archiving
An often-overlooked, but critical component of
remote data management and protection is archiving.
Lets face it, few of us have the time or interest to clean
out our electronic files. Emails building up in Outlook
inboxes and other files building up in private and
shared directories are contributing to the huge volume
of data growing on remote storage. In a recent survey
by Storage Magazine, users indicated the single biggest
reason for backup failure was the quantity of data was
too large to be backed up within the backup window.
The fact is that most user files and email data are
seldom re-opened after the first three days of
creation/receipt. Statistics show that if a file hasn’t
been accessed in 90 days, there’s a 90%+ probability
that it will never be accessed again. Meanwhile, it
consumes valuable storage resources. The problem is
that since we can’t predict what 10% we will need, we
hold on to all of it. The cost-effective solution is to
move unused data to lower cost secondary storage
(archive), with reasonably easy retrieval capabilities,
for long-term retention.
A second key factor driving the need for archiving is
the federal document regulations, such as SEC Rule
17a-4, that require many companies to retain all
communication and documentation for specific time
periods. For a distributed enterprise with many
remote offices, ensuring compliance to these
regulations can be a challenge.
So, cost and legal requirements are compelling
companies to ensure that employee messages are
archived or at the very least, moved to lower-cost,
longer-term media. Similar to remote backup, data
integrity is essential to any archival solution.
Consolidated archival, in which older or unused data
is automatically moved from remote disks to a central
repository, often consisting of lower cost ATA disks,
while leaving transparent access capability for the
remote user, is rapidly gaining acceptance as the most
viable approach to archive for remote data.
The Central Policy/Consolidated
Approach to Managing Remote Data
Rather than relying on individual backups and
separate point processes and staffing required for each
remote site and the staffing required for each, a more
effective enterprise approach is to allow central IT staff
to control remote data management and backup. This
requires understanding the changing properties and
characteristics of remote data. Solutions should be
able to set policies pertaining to the data, automate
processes to execute those policies on remote servers,
and be able to move data between remote or “edge”
servers and central or “core” systems.
In this model, individual remote backup and archiving
processes at the remote sites are replaced with a
consolidated process that moves remote data to a hub
site for backup or archive. This requires moving the
pertinent data over the available networks in an
efficient, secure, timely fashion and therefore requires
technology that can deal with the many issues
associated with controlling and moving data among
many sites and network connections. These issues are
identified in more detail in the next section.
Centrally controlled, automated processes have been
shown to decrease backup costs by as much as 75%
due to the elimination of tapes, tape drives, offsite tape
storage, and the redundant staffing efforts at each
location.
Disk-to-Disk Consolidated Backup
Disk-to-disk backup is gaining popularity due to
factors including the rapidly falling cost of disk
storage, the elimination of the physical limits, and
relative unreliability of manual tape storage programs, as
well as the need for more ready access to data for restore.
Implemented in a best practices model, disk-to-disk
backup for remote data involves moving the data to be
backed up over a network to a different location. The
reason for this is that disk-to-disk backup, if performed
at the same site, does not provide the protection need-
ed to recover from a site disaster event (fire, flood, etc.).
For any business with multiple remote locations,
consolidating disk-to-disk backup brings operational
and cost efficiencies and enhanced data security.
There are two primary consolidated backup
architectures:
• Moving differential data to a central disk
• Consolidating backup images
Both offer central control and automation and the
elimination of individual tapes, tape drives, and offsite
tape storage processes at each site.
3
