By Doug Lawrence, InStock Tape Technician
One certainty in today’s IT world is that data growth WILL continue. As IT managers care less about “WHY?!” and more about how to solve this crisis, there are five practices that every IT manager should practice to capture the expanding data demands. These practices are vital according to Debbie Beech in “Best Practices for backup and long-term data retention”.
Practice 1: Be Efficient – Store Wisely
A recent study from the University of California Santa Cruz showed that 90% of data stored to NAS (Network Attached Storage) was never accessed again. Layman’s terms: most storage will never again be accessed. The key to data storage is to know what needs to be saved for permanent storage never to be seen again and what will need to be accessed once more. This will allow for more efficient data storage by deviating data to the most cost efficient source.
Practice 2: Implement Tiered Storage Architectures
One of the most cost, time and energy efficient practices in IT is hierarchical backups. These solutions would be different depending on the situation but a prime example is a disk to disk to tape backup solution. Depending on recovery time, importance and accessibility needs, data can be stored or archived in the best manner through hierarchical storage.
Practice 3: Mitigate Risk
The IT’s top priority is to keep data secure. This can be done by having multiple levels of protection, keeping at least one copy offline, protect data at rest and in transit, and implementing the right technology mix.
Practice 4: Consider TCO
A good IT manager needs to make cost decisions based on the ENTIRE cost of the solution, not simply the initial cost. Cost issues such as energy, physical storage, management, and scalability costs should all be assessed BEFORE a solution is purchased.
Practice 5: Ensure You Can Restore
Every IT worker and CEO will agree that it is undeniably vital that data backup needs to dependably restore files at any point. Regular checks of hardware, knowledge of shelf life and efficient restores will ensure that there are no bad surprises when crucial restores are needed.
Although these 5 practices are not 100% of the IT manager’s solution to a perfect backup, they will help guide backups to a much higher efficiency and overall better backup for retention and restoration.
