Let’s backup for a second — Why cloud needs better protection

To under­stand the impor­tance of today’s high avail­abil­i­ty, always-on IT strate­gies, you need only look at the impact of down­time. For instance, when a 30 minute out­age at Google makes glob­al head­lines, trends on social media and brings the work of mil­lions to a grind­ing halt, it’s clear we’re liv­ing in an era where cloud infra­struc­ture has demon­strat­ed both its val­ue and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

For organ­i­sa­tions and indi­vid­u­als around the world invest­ed in cloud com­put­ing, the impact of down­time can be cat­a­stroph­ic to rev­enue, cus­tomer loy­al­ty and rep­u­ta­tion. For Google, nor­mal ser­vice was resumed with­in a mat­ter of min­utes, but for many oth­ers, who rely on well estab­lished back­up tech­nolo­gies to pro­tect their data and work­loads, a quick return to busi­ness as usu­al is far less cer­tain.

Back­up plays a key role in the abil­i­ty of any organ­i­sa­tion to deliv­er IT resilience and avoid the impact of down­time. How­ev­er, the back­up indus­try is still oper­at­ing in the same way it was decades ago, rely­ing on peri­od­ic snap­shots — rather than Con­tin­u­ous Data Pro­tec­tion (CDP).

Tak­ing a satir­i­cal jab at this ‘lega­cy’ back­up, the recent launch of “Record-ish: The Orig­i­nal Peri­od­ic Recorder” shines a humor­ous light on what hap­pens when peri­od­ic data pro­tec­tion fails. Posi­tioned as a “tech­nol­o­gy solu­tion” designed for users who only need back­up to work some of the time for their unde­mand­ing work­loads and appli­ca­tions, Record-ish is a fic­tion­al prod­uct that deliv­ers on the lim­i­ta­tions of lega­cy back­up so organ­i­sa­tions of all sizes can meet the needs of the pre-cloud era.

Depict­ed as an old-school tape record­ing device, Record-ish mar­kets itself as a back­up solu­tion that records “some of your data, some of the time” — an exam­ple of a tech­nol­o­gy par­a­digm that holds true to back­up designs dat­ing back over 40 years. The prob­lem is, in today’s always-on world, that just does­n’t cut it.

Invest­ment in this kind of out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy is mak­ing a huge impact on mod­ern enter­pris­es where hybrid dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture is evolv­ing. Despite wide­spread adop­tion, how­ev­er, it remains unclear whether the tech­nol­o­gy is pro­duc­ing the kind of results organ­i­sa­tions are look­ing for.

But, behind the humour, Record-ish deliv­ers an impor­tant mes­sage intend­ed to help organ­i­sa­tions under­stand the risks they take by using lega­cy back­up tech­nolo­gies, and the oppor­tu­ni­ties that exist for improve­ment.

The Record-ish sto­ry is a reac­tion to the tech­nol­o­gy sta­tus quo seen across the back­up mar­ket. In real­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy from the likes of Zer­to is offer­ing to help busi­ness­es shift to true con­tin­u­ous repli­ca­tion with zero data loss for full-time data pro­tec­tion. With IT trans­for­ma­tion now cen­tral to the for­tunes of busi­ness­es in every sec­tor, mod­erni­sa­tion and cloud adop­tion rely on con­tin­u­ous, ‘always on’ avail­abil­i­ty — rather than solu­tions that are ‘some­times there.’ By deliv­er­ing back­up ser­vices with zero data loss to pub­lic cloud mar­ket lead­ers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure, Zer­to deliv­ers new back­up for a new world.

Continuous data protection — maintaining an always-on customer experience

Con­tin­u­ous Data Pro­tec­tion allows organ­i­sa­tions to auto­mat­i­cal­ly cap­ture and track data mod­i­fi­ca­tions, sav­ing every ver­sion of user-cre­at­ed data local­ly or at a tar­get repos­i­to­ry. With lit­tle-to-no pro­duc­tion over­head, incre­men­tal writes are repli­cat­ed con­tin­u­ous­ly and saved to a jour­nal file. CDP’s change block track­ing also allows users or admin­is­tra­tors to restore data to any point in time with remark­able gran­u­lar­i­ty.

The bot­tom line is: what has worked in the past, will not work for the future. Any com­pa­ny still rely­ing on expen­sive, ded­i­cat­ed back­up and dis­as­ter recov­ery infra­struc­ture should be eval­u­at­ing a soft­ware-only plat­form based on a foun­da­tion of CDP.

But how many organ­i­sa­tions can say they are ful­ly pre­pared and con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to han­dle these work­loads?

The risks are very real. From ran­somware attacks and data­base cor­rup­tion to acci­den­tal dele­tions, data and appli­ca­tion avail­abil­i­ty can no longer be con­sid­ered sep­a­rate­ly. Mod­ern work­load move­ment tech­nol­o­gy allows appli­ca­tions to move seam­less­ly from on-premise to mul­ti-cloud. Data avail­abil­i­ty must move in tan­dem to assure the great­est agili­ty and meet avail­abil­i­ty SLAs. Appli­ca­tions and data must remain avail­able, regard­less of the dis­rup­tion, because cus­tomer rela­tions and loy­al­ty leave lit­tle room for down­time or data loss.

Take ran­somware, for exam­ple, which is becom­ing one of the fastest grow­ing recov­ery headaches for busi­ness­es around the world. Once an organ­i­sa­tion falls vic­tim to a ran­somware attack, files are locked down. And if the lat­est back­up is from last night, last week, or, even last month, the ques­tions become, “How much data can we stand to lose?”, “What’s this going to cost the busi­ness?”, and “How will it impact my organisation’s rep­u­ta­tion?”

For many busi­ness­es, being on the receiv­ing end of a ran­somware attack is only a mat­ter of time. The prob­lem is, hav­ing to restore to a day-old or even week-old back­up means data loss and increased time and expense in recov­ery efforts.

As a result, com­pa­nies are mak­ing the switch to solu­tions based on con­tin­u­ous data pro­tec­tion that meet the avail­abil­i­ty SLA’s required of today’s busi­ness while sup­port­ing hybrid and mul­ti-cloud envi­ron­ments. IDC, for instance, reports that 70% of CIOs have a cloud-based strat­e­gy for appli­ca­tion deploy­ment. Its Tech­nol­o­gy Spot­light Report exam­ines a new era of back­up and recov­ery, answer­ing ques­tions on best prac­tices and how organ­i­sa­tions can future proof their infra­struc­ture. For any organ­i­sa­tion with a Record-ish back­up strat­e­gy, it’s well worth a look.

To find out more about Record-ish, vis­it: https://www.record-ish.com

Pro­mot­ed by Zer­to