Page 93 - Cyber Warnings

Modern storage systems have also made life a lot easier for ROBOs. Whether it's a new
solution rolled out to serve every branch or a solution that's just deployed on site, new storage
solutions are helping ROBOs store — and what is more important, backup and replicate — their
data more intelligently.
The cloud is now a suitable option to move and store backup and replicated data, unlike the
leased private lines that are often a significant performance bottleneck to perform this task.

Best Availability Practices for the Branch Office
Many organizations struggle to select the best solutions for on-site and off-site backup, because
there really isn't a one-size-fits-all approach for remote office architecture.

Organizations often end up choosing between taking on-site backups, writing backups off-site or
doing replicas both on and off-site — instead of considering how they could utilize them all.

There is the long-promoted 3-2-1 rule for Availability that can be the best solution in this
situation. It states that there should be: 3 copies of important data, on 2 different media,
with 1 off-site.

The 3-2-1 rule is highly versatile and can address just about any failure scenario imaginable by
ensuring that all data is both backed up in multiple locations, and also quickly recoverable. This
approach means that companies don't have to worry about getting locked into any particular
technology or specific vendor and can stay flexible as their IT environment evolves and
expands.

Replicas are more suitable than backups in true disaster situations, when the RTO needs to be
reduced to a minimum and all production loads need to be moved to another site in the least
amount of time possible. Replicated virtual machines (VMs) are inventoried and ready-to-run
VMs in their own right, so when the worst happens, they can be failed over very quickly on
dedicated and similar hardware that's pre-deployed on the Disaster Recovery (DR) site.

This is why replication needs a higher investment when it comes to storage and computing
power at the DR site. Backups don't offer the same speed for recovery time objectives (RTOs),
but are more flexible and portable and require lower storage consumption.

Backups can be copied on different support media and are much more manageable when
addressing day-to-day recovery scenarios typical in ROBO environments.

With a large number of sites and locations, companies need to make a choice about where to
do their backups and replication. This can be a challenge because some sites may require
replicas, others may need backups as well, and they all need to have their individual
specifications and requirements considered.

Having backups taken on-site provides some important benefits:
93 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine November 2016 Edition
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