VIDEO: What to plan for in a Data Protection Spectrum

Continuing on the theme that we started last year that “Data Protection” is the umbrella theme that encompasses a broad range (spectrum) of IT behaviors, including “Backup, Snapshots, Replication, etc.”:

     DPspectrum1

Here is a video that gives some color to those ideas (pun intended):

    

1. Start with a fresh understanding of your business units’ operational requirements, based on feedback from the business owners, department heads, application experts and other stakeholders.  To get more ideas around quantifying the cost of downtime for assessing the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and Risk Analysis (RA), download this chapter from my book – Data Protection by the Numbers.

2. Once you can quantify their recovery goals (SLA/RPO/RTO) and the business impacts of them not achieving their availability requirements, then choose the “color” of the DP Spectrum that best meets those goals.

3. If the solution’s TCO/ROI is in line with reducing the business impact, meaning that the solution doesn’t cost more than the problem, then add the method (not yet the product) to your DP Solution Architecture

4. Once you understand which colors (i.e. backups, snapshots, archives, replication, clustering, etc.) that really fit your business needs

If you do this, you will likely find that most of the colors of the DP Spectrum fit within your business strategy, but that does not mean that you should necessarily settle for 10 products from 7 vendors – because it is unlikely that you’ll be able to cost-justify it otherwise.  Instead, , look for solutions that consolidate the management of them:

  • Backup software that also manages snapshots or replication, perhaps that also includes archival features
  • Protection storage that can support backups and archives (meaning extended retention), that has effective deduplication AND whose data is very durable
  • Expertise that can knit not only the product components, but also the strategies, together into a living DP plan

Thanks for watching.

[Originally posted on ESG’s Technical Optimist.com]

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