Traditional Backup System Vs Modern Data Protection Techniques

By CIOReview | Friday, December 23, 2016

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Data protection is an important part of organizational infrastructure as it ensures data safety and helps in data restoration in case of any catastrophe. Organizations are using various methods such as backup and restore, disaster recovery, and cloud to keep their information safe. Companies are taking safety measures according to their size and needs; a small firm selects backup software while a large scale industry implements separate IT disaster recovery plan.

Modern enterprise data safety techniques enable companies to restore data quickly while traditional backup systems needs some time for data retrieval. The traditional backup system lacks the capability of indexing functionality which allows users to manage their archive and backup together. Snapshots are used in both traditional and modern backup systems, but previously, a separate management was required for it, where as now managing array-based snapshots are integrated into the data protection process.

The first stage of data safety technique started from taking backups on magnetic tape drives than disk-based systems and now it reached to the cloud. Latest technologies are leveraged for the data protection strategies to simplify scheduling of routine management processes, but traditional backup systems have their own positives. The disk-based systems allow faster data recovery. The performance metrics for disk-based data recovery systems is high as users can write data and retrieve it at fast speeds. The recovery time for disk-based systems is very less. The functionality of traditional backup systems is versatile as it optimizes various Backup and Data Recovery (BDR) solutions with its own features like the deduplication that help IT managers in saving space from the unnecessary data.

However, the drawback of the traditional data backup systems is that the need of hardware and space increases in proportion to data which leads to rise in both CAPEX and OPEX. The backups are stored at onsite data center and in case of any disaster, all data will be lost. The other concern with traditional systems is regarding the life of storage devices.

The modern data safety techniques came into existence after the evolution of cloud. It revolutionized the data recovery strategy as a whole. Cloud enables companies to keep their data safe at any remote location. The data circulated during daily operations are operated through cloud and instead of relying on offline systems. It keeps data safe during any case of on-site disaster and the company can retrieve whole data within minutes.

Integration of Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) ensures data safety from any natural or man-made catastrophe by hosting all clients’ data on the cloud. The other factor behind companies integrating cloud to their infrastructure is its cost efficiency. The ownership cost of cloud computing is less in comparison to disk or tape backup systems. The level of security is very high as company’s data remain unaffected from any on-site disaster. Installing cloud into infrastructure is not a very complex process as company systems can start running within minutes of its installation. Other advantages of cloud systems include its compatibility with all IT devices, systems and applications.

Any technology is not perfect and there are some drawbacks at a certain stage. The cloud data protection systems have some performance issues. The cloud based backup and data recovery totally depends on the internet connection of cloud service provider. Any disturbance in the internet connection can disturb routine backup strategies and harm recovery objectives. Cloud computing is vulnerable to security concerns. The cloud service provider uses data encryption technique to take data from one end to another. However, the concern occurs as information at data center is highly vulnerable to cyber threats.

The traditional backup and modern data protection fulfils the data security woes in their own ways. Companies have the option to integrate hybrid data protection systems to their infrastructure in which they can save their data in the cloud along with keeping a backup of important data on-site. So, in case vendor’s network is down, the company can retrieve data from their on-site systems and retrieve it conveniently from cloud during any on-site disaster.