12-27-21 | Blog Post
Data is the lifeblood of every business. Companies are constantly utilizing data analytics to make decisions about product upgrades, operations improvements, and even crucial business choices. With data playing such a central role in day to day operations, it is no wonder that the protection of that data is a topic at the forefront of many CIOs minds.
Traditionally, companies have taken a “universal” approach to data protection, applying one fail-safe solution to all of the company’s data. However, with the quantity of data that most companies store growing at alarming rates, legacy data backup and disaster recovery solutions are no longer cutting it for data protection.
Many IT teams take the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to legacy BDR solutions. But the truth of the matter is that these outdated data protection solutions are causing more harm than good. Here are a few issues that arise from a failure to modernize backup and disaster recovery solutions:
Delayed Cloud Adoption – With many companies looking to make the shift to the cloud, traditional backup infrastructures present a huge hurdle. Given that legacy backup solutions were not designed with cloud solutions in mind, they are not easy to migrate from and, as a result, companies are not utilizing cloud solutions to their full potential.
Prolonged Backup Windows – As data sizes continue to grow, conducting full and incremental backups with legacy BDR solutions becomes unmanageable. When data is the bread and butter of your business, backups should be done quickly and efficiently. However, with traditional BDR models, full backup windows can easily extend beyond SLA requirements. Additionally, drawn out backup windows can impact application performance, causing more issues with productivity.
Lengthy Recoveries – Backups mean nothing without recoveries. And while we have already touched on the long backup windows, slow recoveries are an even bigger concern with legacy BDR solutions. prolonged data recovery windows can severely impact day to day business operations. Not to mention cause huge losses for businesses, typically in the form of reputation, customers and revenue. It order to avoid these issues, businesses need to find ways to accelerate recovery speeds.
Disaster Recovery Challenges – With data protection a high concern for today’s enterprises, businesses need to think about more than local backup and recovery, they need to think about disaster recovery. Traditional BDR solutions limit a business’s ability to focus on DR due to the complexity and time it takes to restore data. As a result, businesses will employ less reliable DR plans and will face a greater risk in the event of a disaster.
Multiple RPOs – Legacy DBR solutions are often inconsistent and mandate different recovery point objectives. This inconsistency can lead to issues with the deployment and management of backups and a lack of well defined direction.
Big Data Protection – The larger the database of data to protect, the more issues that arise with legacy BDR solutions. Given that most data sets are critical to a business’s operations, it is important to keep this data secure. A job that is made more difficult with the lengthy backup windows and slow recoveries of legacy solutions.
Tape Concerns – For companies that are still deploying tape backups, concerns arise for data integrity. Tape has been known to degrade over time and, as a result, data can be damaged or lost. Thus as a solution for long-term data retention, tape does not inspire much confidence.
Protecting your data is like protecting money, it needs to be held somewhere secure where you can easily access it in case of emergency. For money, this place is a bank; for data, it is in the cloud. Cloud backup and DR solutions are more reliable, fast and secure than legacy solutions, and can provide CIOs with a greater peace of mind. Data that is being backed up consistently, easy to access and can be recovered faster will provide companies with a more productive staff. By not wasting time managing multiple RPOs and waiting for sluggish backups and recoveries to finish, companies can innovate more and manage BDR less. Additionally, cloud BDR solutions will allow businesses to recover faster in the event of a disaster.
