Is online backup something for you ?
In this blog post I’m highlighting another of Iron Mountain Digital’s offering, LiveVault.
Businesses of all sizes depend on their computer data for their very existence. Whether it’s a large enterprise with transactional data or a 15-person law office with valuable client records, business data represents a valuable and irreplaceable business asset. The business risk of losing this data — or even losing access to this data — is well documented and well recognized. A survey of over 200 small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by Imation indicates that 90 percent have some formal backup and restore strategy. The question is: which strategy is best for your company?
In addition, continuously expanding regulatory requirements are forcing businesses to re-examine their current storage and recovery strategies. Businesses must justify their backup strategies as compliant with mandates for privacy, security, and accessibility. Therefore, understanding your need for server backup is only the first step in the process. The next step is determining the right data protection strategy for your business.
Problems with Traditional Backup
Even though companies may recognize the value and necessity of backup, their choice of backup solution may not be appropriate for their needs. Part of the challenge relates to size: small and medium-sized businesses may lack the resources to dedicate to implementing and maintaining backup solutions. Even large enterprises with IT departments face challenges in adequately managing remote locations.
Traditional Backup or Online Backup?
The decision between traditional backup and online backup depends on your business requirements, including your company’s goals for restore time objectives (RTOs) and restore point objectives (RTOs), desired backup window, the amount and change rate of the data, and the specific compliance and security requirements for your industry. Traditional backup — today’s usual approach to protecting vital business data — does have limitations that many recognize. For example, industry analysts Baroudi Bloor warn that restoring from tape fails to restore data completely as much as half of the time. Some companies cope with unreliable data restore by keeping several copies of the tape backup, which may be acceptable unless there are compliance issues. Even so, this is an indefensible level of avoidable risk. After all, which half of your data can your company afford to lose? Your customer orders? Your client records? Your invoices?
The truth is that virtually all your company data is critical to ongoing operations and must not be placed in jeopardy. The usual backup approaches include practices that too many businesses regard as acceptable. In reality, these traditional backup practices often don’t meet business objectives for RTOs and RPOs.
LiveVault® is the ideal online backup solution which providess a server backup and restore solution that is ideal for small and medium sized businesses, as well as enterprises with remote locations. The LiveVault® solution combines the speed and ease-of-use of disk-based backup with the security and convenience of online backup. LiveVault’s features include:
- Disk-Based Backup: LiveVault is faster and more reliable than tape backup. Your data is easily accessible and available for quick restore.
- Off-Site Electronic Vaulting: LiveVault electronically transmits your backed-up data to Iron Mountain’s mirrored and secure underground storage facilities, providing real-time remote storage to protect against disasters at the server location. Redundant sites keep duplicates of your data so recovery is guaranteed.
- Continuous Backup: LiveVault takes a snapshot of your server data as often as every 15 minutes, minimizing, the time between the last backup set and a server failure. This means that IT can restore the server to its state just 15 minutes before the loss, rather than hours or days before. File recovery is significantly faster than with traditional backup restoration.
- Encrypted Backup: LiveVault uses government-level, 256-bit AES encryption, as well as SSL-based VPN tunneling and digital certificates, to ensure that your data is always protected both while in transit and while in the secure vault. Decryption is only possible with a key that your enterprise controls.
- Minimizing Backup Size: LiveVault monitors changes at the file system I/O level, and backs up only the changed regions of each file, reducing backup time. LiveVault’s unique DeltaRestore™ technology restores only the data that has changed, drastically speeding restoration.
- Automatic Backup: Automatic backup removes the burden from IT, so that remote servers get backed up with limited or no IT involvement. Your administrators can schedule how often to back up the data and limit how much bandwidth to use for backup.
- Online Backup: LiveVault stores your data online where it’s available to your business whenever necessary.
- Web-Based Recovery: LiveVault’s integrated Web Management Portal is always available for maintaining your backup implementation and initiating data recovery. Simply log on to the Web portal from anywhere with an Internet connection, select the files to restore, and specify the destination.
- Optional On-Site Backup: LiveVault offers the option of the TurboRestore™ Appliance, a local device that retains up to one week of backup data for even faster restoration. The administrator can initiate a restore from the local appliance without needing an active Internet connection.
- Access and Retrieval for eDiscovery: Iron Mountain’s optional LiveVault® DiscoveryAssist™ solution enables enterprises to access and retrieve data across all LiveVault repositories to speed data collection for legal discovery. File metadata supports Iron Mountain’s Stratify® (as well as third-party) eDiscovery search and review applications. LiveVault DiscoveryAssist dramatically reduces expenses for eDiscovery.
You can read more about LiveVault and what it can do for you at the Iron Mountain Digital website.
Tags: backup, iron mountain, iron mountain digital, LiveVault, online backup
