FAQs:Disaster Recovery FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Disaster recovery process
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What do tiered storage and ILM have to do with disaster recovery?
FAQ - That idea ties back into the topics of data growth, data control, data management and recoverability. Once you start categorizing your data based on criticality and recovery priority, it gives you an indication of your data segments. We have our...
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Aren't backups and archives essentially the same thing?
FAQ - The answer to that can be a "yes" and "no." If we look at a very high level, a copy of data is a copy of data, and that's where a lot of people confuse both as being somewhat the same -- one copy is just kept longer. When we start digging into what a...
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What is the difference between disk backup and data replication?
FAQ - The terms have been used interchangeably quite a bit lately because of the popularity of disk backup that is really gaining. The thing is, disk backup is technically another form of media that your backup application or solution can write to. Data...
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What is the difference between RPO and RTO (from a backup perspective)?
FAQ - The recovery point objective (RPO) and the recovery time objective (RTO) are two very specific parameters that are closely associated with recovery. The RTO is how long you can basically go without a specific application. This is often associated with...
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What is considered best practices in terms of backup vaulting (offsite storage) frequency?
FAQ - As a consultant, this is something that I run into frequently. There seems to be a belief that if you're a smaller shop or smaller business: You don't have a lot of data, and you don't need to send your data offsite very often. A lot of times, the...
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Are tape backups a thing of the past when it comes to disaster recovery?
FAQ - It is very interesting how quickly things change in our industry -- My answer to this question a year ago was highlighted replication or mirroring for highly critical data, disk-to-disk backups for middle tier data and finally, low cost tape backups for...
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Should I back up the operating system files?
FAQ - Here is another prime example of technology evolving to meet business requirements. I have always been a firm believer that, except for small IT environments, operating systems files should not be part of regular backups...
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Improve recovery time for email and file servers, and spend less on remote replication
FAQ - This is a growing concern in the industry today because we've seen data growth at 50-60% on a yearly basis. The file servers are getting huge. Mail servers are becoming just impossible to manage or to restore. And a lot of that difficulty is caused by a...