Network backup solves data security challenges

The level of enterprise business redundancy depends on the integrity of the data stored on the server. For companies that provide services to cloud storage customers, business cannot be continued without 99.9999% uptime and absolute assurance of data backup and recovery. Therefore, there are several problems to be solved.

First, the enterprise must not only ensure that data is backed up in a precise and secure manner, that each packet and byte is protected, and that the data is "clean" enough to be successfully loaded back into the system when recovery is required. Enterprises in the backup problem on the forward-looking often insufficient, so many enterprises in the see the results of unforeseen often do not know what to do.

You must have a procedure to implement a backup. The latest results from network and backup technologies make it easier to back up data over the network. Traditional backup procedures require the use of tape drives on branch office servers, which are backed up at the end of each day's work, and are physically sent to headquarters. But moving data through physical means can have some obvious problems. For example, verify backed up data before sending to Headquarters, damage to tapes during transport, risk of data loss, or theft. More importantly, because current backups are often performed for specific situations, these backup data are often unsuccessful backups when the IT administrator prepares to synchronize the backed-up data to the datacenter. But these problems are not insurmountable, many new solutions can support a variety of operating systems and applications, to achieve optimal backup on the WAN.

In fact, enterprises can take advantage of modern data protection technology to cope with the increasing contradiction between backup data and bandwidth. For example, fingerprint technology is used to identify unique file fragments, and all redundant data in a remote workplace is verified, and a storage pool is provided at each remote location to replicate data over a wide area network. Next, the storage pool is responsible for checking the uniqueness of files on all local agents. This approach minimizes the need for wide area network bandwidth, because only unique file fragments are replicated to primary storage devices in the central datacenter. In addition, this approach can achieve higher scalability because of reduced storage capacity requirements.

By identifying unique content and storing backup data locally, the remote location's storage pool optimizes data on all branch office clients. This reduces the process of backup and recovery tasks and enables synchronization with the central location. Files can be backed up to a central storage device over a WAN. This method can also encrypt every piece of file sent to the storage device to solve one of the most important problems in the security of WAN data. Since data is encrypted before it is sent over a WAN to a storage device, this ensures that the data is secure during communication. This architecture eliminates the risk of tape accidental loss and unauthorized access to data. After all, both of these risks may exist in both the migration and the storage state.

Recently, the Islamic bank has deployed a set of solutions to enable the Bank's Linux environment to have a highly scalable high-performance data protection architecture. The environment contains more than 100 servers and a central network device storage pool. The problem for the bank is that data from more than 100 branches in major Pakistani cities must be merged. The bank has adopted an Open-source backup software to implement its own local data protection solution. Almost all of the bank's PCs and servers are running in SUSE Linux environments, and are also extended to branches of the network.

"Each Islamic bank branch has a file server that holds files for users of the branch," said Asad Alim, head of information technology at the Islamic Bank. In the past, we had to deploy only one tape drive per branch and use regular scripting to perform the necessary backup work. With this traditional approach, it takes a whole day to perform a restore. As long as the tape is properly readable, it can be recovered successfully, provided that the tape is taken from a remote location, the correct tape is found that contains the correct block of information, and then the tape is returned to the site after the recovery is complete. ”

When it comes to bandwidth throttling, Asad Alim commented: "We are very concerned about the pressure that backup work brings to the network, but even with bandwidth 256Kbps connectivity, the performance of the backup is still stable." "Data is sent over a WAN to a central storage device, where it is uncompressed and stored as a copy. In the process of data transmission, an intelligent algorithm is also used. If the backup fails due to a connection failure or loss, the backup work continues at the disconnect.

Asad Alim said: "Cost savings are a great advantage, but more importantly, the branch data has now been secured." Remember that in the past we were never 100% sure that we could recover a missing file. We are now reducing the reliance on tape in the disaster recovery process and implementing encrypted replication of backup data. ”