The pressure being placed on data protection is increasing. User expectations, government regulations and the emergence of big data analytics has raised the standard for both rapid recovery and long term data retention. The next generation of data protection solutions are going to be in high demand and have high expectations associated with them.

The combination of these factors has lead to a resurgence in backup solutions, both hardware and software, all trying to help the IT professional deliver on these new expectations. A key area of focus for these solutions is going to be reducing the time to recover protected servers or virtual machines.

Rapid Recovery

While creating a reliable backup is important, IT professionals will be judged on their ability to recover data quickly. There are two capabilities that they should be looking for to meet this demand. The first is recovery in place. This is the ability to start a server directly from the backup device. Essentially the backup device is able to provide a mount to the infrastructure and data can be accessed without being copied back across the network. This essentially eliminates the data transfer portion of recovery.

The down side of recovery in place is that the server is now having its data served to it from a device that was designed for backup data not primary data, so performance will likely suffer. At some point the server’s volume or virtual image will need to be moved back to the primary storage device.

Alternatively the need can be met with change block recovery. Think of changed block recovery as the reverse of changed block backup, where on a restoration only the blocks that need to be recovered are sent back to the destination. While in this restoration some data movement is required, the data is where it belongs and on the storage device that it needs to be. 

Rapid Testing - The Best Backup Verification

One of the side benefits of leveraging this rapid recovery technology is its ability to provide a simple and fast way to test the recovery of a server or virtual machine. There is no better way to validate the quality of the backup than to actually recover the protected system. These rapid recovery technologies allow the backup administrator to point the recovery at a test server or VM and provide the ultimate proof of backup quality.

In his opening remarks during the Next Generation Data Protection panel session, George Crump, Lead Analyst with Storage Switzerland, will discuss what capabilities are needed most in the data center of today in addition to rapid recovery and how those capabilities may manifest themselves in the next generation of backup products. Then he will lead a panel of presenters that will show you what to expect from the next generation of data protection.

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