It’s March 31st. For some, it’s just another day, but for others, it serves as a crucial reminder about the importance of backing up data. Today marks World Backup Day, providing us with an opportunity to emphasize the significance of protecting our digital assets.
Hi there, my name is Jasmin, partnering with BDRSuite. I specialize in backup and recovery, and I would like to share some insights on this important day.
Who invented it?
Maxtor, an American company specializing in manufacturing hard disks, initially launched Backup Month to highlight the importance of data backup. That idea was well accepted, and it evolved into World Backup Day. This annual event started in 2011 and continues to be recognized globally.
It’s cool that World Backup Day is always on March 31st, right before April Fool’s Day. This timing reminds us to keep our data safe and not get tricked. Pretty interesting, isn’t it?
Losing data can be incredibly painful!
Data is now considered a valuable currency and a crucial operational asset for businesses. Without it, we’re left feeling lost. You don’t need to operate on an enterprise level to understand the impact; even personal data, such as decades of archived documents, projects, and family photos, holds significant value.
I advocate for and support the mindset that backup is not just nice to have; backup and recovery are a must-have, as stated in one of my LinkedIn posts:
Challenges Where Backup Can Rescue You
Have you heard the saying ‘You don’t need backup until you lose it’? Sadly, that’s the point when many of us begin thinking of its importance. I want to give you a glimpse of when backup and recovery can be a great fit.
Hardware Failure
Have you ever experienced a situation where one morning, you made yourself a coffee, sat down to work, turned on your machine, and it wouldn’t boot? Upon diagnosis, you discovered that the disk had failed. As a site technician, I frequently assisted customers in overcoming this nightmare scenario.
Hardware components can fail unexpectedly, including disks, disk controllers, and storage devices.
The only effective solution? It’s simple: having a backup.
Note: Providing high-availability services is also important.
Ransomware attacks
Since the onset of COVID-19, there has been a significant increase in ransomware attacks and other sophisticated threats, putting our data at great risk.
I recall a story from 15 years ago when I was still trying to grasp IT concepts: my tech company fell victim to an attack. One morning, upon attempting to access data, a colleague noticed some files had strange extensions and were unreadable. It became evident that we had been hacked.
Fortunately, we had a backup stored externally. Although not up to date, it proved to be invaluable.
Ransomware attacks target any operating system with the same objective: encrypting data and demanding a ransom.
I’ve written three blog articles on this topic. You can read more about it here:
- Protect your VMware workloads against Abyss Locker Ransomware
- Rhysida Ransomware: Latest Cyber Threat & Effective Defense Strategies
- Monti Ransomware Returns: How to Protect Your Linux Machines
Human errors
Whenever I discuss human error, I always bring up James Howells. James once owned a hard disk containing 7500 bitcoins. In 2013, while cleaning his home, he mistakenly threw away the disk containing the cryptographic private key.
Despite submitting a request to the Newport City Council to search for his disk in the landfill, it was unfortunately rejected. Fast forward to March 31, 2024, and the value of those 7500 bitcoins stands at 492 million euros.
Human error can happen to anyone. You might accidentally format the wrong drive or delete the wrong files. This can result in some downtime, but with a backup, you can quickly access and restore the data with just a couple of clicks.
Natural disasters
Imagine a scenario where you have a headquarters with around 100 TB of data. Suddenly, an earthquake strikes, destroying the building along with your infrastructure and storage. All your data is lost. Even if you had a robust backup strategy onsite, a natural disaster like this would make it ineffective.
What’s the alternative? You need to implement offsite backup as well. Offsite backup involves storing your data in another geographical location, either on-premises or in the cloud. The best practice in backup strategies is to follow the 3-2-1 rule.
I wrote an article explaining the 3-2-1 backup rule, which outlines the recommended approach for backups. According to this rule, you should create three copies of your data: the original and two additional copies. These two copies should be stored in two different storage locations, with one copy saved in an offsite location, such as the cloud.
You can read more details here What is the 3-2-1 Backup Rule and How BDRSuite Can Simplify it Practically?
Compliance and Legal Requirements
When attempting to sell products or services, one of the requirements that customers may have is if you are ISO 27001 certified. Additionally, depending on the industry your organization is in, ISO 27001 certification is a must.
Why is that? Because ISO 27001 defines policies and procedures on how you should treat your data. If your organization aims to obtain an ISO 27001 certificate, ensuring proper backup and disaster recovery measures is not a choice; it is a must.
Other Benefits
There are additional challenges that a backup and recovery plan can address. These challenges often represent variations of those already mentioned, such as data loss resulting from system failures, various cybersecurity threats, ensuring business continuity, mitigating internal threats, maintaining customer trust, and others.
Don’t wait for disaster to strike; be prepared with BDRSuite!
In this section, I would like to give you a sneak peek into BDRSuite, a robust backup and recovery solution that can fix the problems. Let’s dive in!
Streamlined Management
When it comes to setting up backups, having a single interface (UI) to manage all your backup operations, whether it’s VMware, Hyper-V, Windows, Linux, KVM or any other platform you’re utilizing, is incredibly convenient.
Read more here Monitor & Manage all backup servers with Centralized Tool.
Instant Boot
Instant boot is a technology that helps you instantly recover your virtual machine in case of failure, taking only a matter of seconds.
Read more here Instant Boot VM
Instant Boot Live Migration
Instant Boot Live Migration is the process of permanently moving the virtual/physical machine backup data from the instant boot environment to the production environment.
If one of your production physical or virtual machines crashes or gets corrupted, no worries! You can instantly boot the backup using Instant Boot VM Recovery.
You can read more here BDRSuite Feature: Instant Boot Live Migration.
Application-centric Backups
Application-aware backups refer to a backup process that not only captures the data stored within an application but also understands the structure and dependencies of that application. Examples include Exchange, Active Directory, and Microsoft SQL.
Read more here Application-aware VM Backup.
Advanced Retention
BDRSuite offers the GFS backup retention policy, wherein GFS represents Grandfather-Father-Son. This policy aims to optimize recovery points while minimizing storage consumption. You can practically do daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
You can read more here Advanced Retention Policy.
Granular Recovery
Granular recovery allows you to backup and recovery individual files or items from your disk, instead of having to restore the entire disk or system.
Read more here Granular Recovery.
Automated Verification
When you back up your data, ensuring recoverability is crucial. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your data cannot be recovered due to some issue. That’s where BDRSuite’s Automated Verification feature comes to the place.
Read more here Automated Backup Verification.
Disaster Ready
You can replicate a copy of your backup data to various offsite storage options, including a secondary disk, cloud storage, or tape. This approach ensures that your data is securely stored in different locations, providing added protection against data loss in case of disasters or hardware failures.
Scale-out storage
Vembu offers support for various storage media as backup targets, including Local drives, NAS (NFS and CIFS), and SAN (iSCSI and FC).
Read more here Efficient Storage Management.
Experience BDRSuite for Free Today!
I would encourage you to download BDRSuite and test how smooth it is. If you need assistance, feel free to drop an email to the BDRSuite Support Team.
I really love the products where I can reach out to support 24/7. It gives me a sense of security. That is the case with the BDRSuite Support Team.
Happy 31st of March – The World Backup Day!
Adopting this mindset helps us stay proactive and ensure our safety.
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