Top 6 Challenges with Traditional Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions | Zmanda Blogs

What do you think businesses use as a leverage point to mint revenue and profits? It’s DATA. Companies now use advanced data analytics to launch their innovative products and services in the market, improve operations, or to make better decisions based on correct information. In short, data is the “HEARTBEAT” for businesses. So it is understandable why they go great extents to protect it from corruption or loss.

Do you still own a traditional data backup and recovery solution? Having a robust data backup and disaster recovery solution is a critical element when looking to minimize the impact of unplanned downtime on your business. The sooner you get one, the smoother your organization will run for a more extended period.

Any downtime results in the derailing of customer interactions, data loss, and loss of revenue for many organizations across industries. According to Gartner, The average cost of network downtime is around $5,600 per minute, which is approximately $300,000 per hour. For any business, $300,000/hr is a lot on the line.

Historically, companies adopted traditional data protection solutions, but with the tremendous growth of data, the ability to protect that data and ensuring a clean recovery for access during recovery has become more and more dubious.

Failing to modernize their backup and disaster strategies have cost many businesses millions. In fact, a 2015 “study from EMC suggested that data loss and downtime cost a total of $1.7 trillion each year” (The Real Cost). Since data is becoming digital that number is expected to increase as time goes on.

Traditional Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution Challenges:

Most of the companies seem to have a data backup and disaster recovery plan of some type, and there are still many organizations that don’t have any such plan. Historically, companies seem to have adopted traditional data protection solutions. Again, with the tremendous data growth, data protection, and recovery has become more uncertain. With data becoming more digital, the number is expected to increase as time goes on. Let’s have a look at some of the traditional data backup and recovery solution challenges.

1. Corruption and Revelation of Magnetic Media

There are concerns regarding data integrity for the companies that still deploy tape backups. Magnetic tapes store data in a traditional backup environment. Data backup tapes are built with magnetic media, which is extremely vulnerable to corruption and exposure.

With data backup tapes, data is usually saved to the magnetic media and any exposure to a fingerprint or getting too close to a magnetized area, leads the data on the tape unusable, and you will only know about the corruption when you try to restore and find it isn’t there. There seems to be a significant failure rate on magnetic media, but still, people assume the data that is stored on their tapes is safe and sound.

However, the major problem is that it is almost impossible to find that the media is corrupt until it is put for restoring purposes. Corrupt media makes the tapes unusable. After all these issues, there still people who think that data stored in the tapes are safe.

2. Restore Time in Traditional Backup Solutions

As mentioned earlier, if we assume that the backup units are destroyed in a disaster, then even to begin the restoration progress, it could take days or weeks. The restore process will start only when the backup units are procured.

However, it is impossible to predict the amount of time it would take for the restoration to complete as it also depends on the size of the data. Also, until the required applications are restored and configured, the data is of no use.

3. A Backup for the Backup

Natural disasters are unexpected and cause problems on multiple levels. A massive catastrophe will destroy all of the data backups if stored within the premises of the region where the disaster occurred. The problems will not be alleviated even if the backups remain secured at a different location, not affected by the disaster.

Moving tapes back to their source usually takes time; even if moved, it would still be considered useless as the backup systems required to restore the tapes might be destroyed in the disaster. As a result, poor reputation, more extended downtime, loss of clients, and a possible loss of data if the tapes are corrupted.

4. Unpredictable Cost

Organizations employ data backup strategies without a clear knowledge of what the real costs are going to be. This holds true for remote backup systems where service providers charge by the gigabyte stored, yet with the amount of data growing all the time, it can fluctuate greatly. As a part of the overall backup strategy, few remote data backup providers permitted using local storage. But when for storing remote data prices shot up, many were turned off from the early implementations of these services.

5. Limited Cloud Usage

Cloud is the new normal when we talk about long-term retention and data protection. Traditional backup infrastructure looks to be a hurdle for organizations that want to shift to the Cloud.

As the traditional backup solutions were not designed to keep cloud solutions in mind, thus organizations are not able to migrate to cloud solutions with their full potential. This has resulted in limited usage of modern technologies and higher renovation time for data restoration.

6. Slow Recoveries

In a traditional data backup and disaster recovery solution, the recovery time ranges from a couple of days to weeks. To restore the last known state of the data center, each server node is re-initiated, with tedious installations of the base operating system and the entire application software, including all updates and patches. Additionally, the entire network configuration is restored, matching the original settings, including VLANs, VPNs, DNS, and firewall rules.

Wrap-up!

With the volume of data increasing enormously, many organizations look for different strategies to back up their data. Most of the time, they opt for more sophisticated tape backups. Regardless of whatever methods organizations choose, there seem to be some common drawbacks that affect the business.

Using a robust data backup and disaster recovery solution with features like de-duplication, encryption, and compression will not only solve the problems of traditional data backup solutions, but it will also save you thousands of dollars. If you are still using a traditional data backup solution, then now is the time to evaluate a better solution in order to avoid these common pitfalls.

A secure place for money is the bank, and for data, it is in the Cloud. When compared to traditional backup systems, Cloud-based data backup and DR solutions are more reliable, fast, and secure.

Zmanda is an all-in-one data backup and disaster recovery solution that protects files, servers, and entire data centers. This modern solution is designed for companies that have an extremely low tolerance for data loss, downtime, or risk mitigation.