‘Application awareness’ in general is defined as the ability and efficiency level of a system which maintains information about active/connected applications that are running for a time period in that particular system. Application awareness helps to optimize the work structure and efficiency of the sub-system in control. Due to this application aware backup is needed.
Living in a period where business continuity is a goal every organization is striving to maintain, application awareness provides great benefits to data and asset management. Application awareness is used in many forms to boost an organization; it is used in storage, resource allocation and backup schedules.
In this discussion, we are going to look into application aware backups. Data backup is the most important attribute an organization can rely on in the event of a disaster, but what if a recent backup is needed that was backed up hours before the disaster? In this event, an organization would suffer from data loss, unless they are using application aware backup.
Application aware backup are used to:
Improve RPOs
A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum tolerance point that a data center can survive from a disaster. Based on these measures, backups are scheduled in a never miss basis between such periods. Application aware backup helps users to measure these RPOs with more accuracy.
Maintain consistency with application aware backup
Applications like MySQL, MS SQL, MS SharePoint, Exchange Server and Exchange Mailbox are sensitive applications. When they are about to get scheduled for backup, the drivers related to those applications have to be signalled to halt until a snapshot for backup is created successfully. In this way, consistent backups can be maintained as the VSS snapshots are taken after post backup commands execution.
Save Storage Space
In exchange and SQL backups, log truncations are performed in a timely basis before taking VSS snapshots which ensures that the backups avoid failure due to large size occupancy. This avoids inconsistency and ensures that restoring backups will be more stable than ever.
Taking advantage of application aware backup will ensure you have a regulated and consistent model to keep your business continuity plan effective.
To learn more about application aware on Vembu BDR suite of products, do mail us at: vembu-support@vembu.com
Interested? Do give it a try today: https://www.bdrsuite.com/try/
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