By Darrell Bowmer, Lead Engineer, Data Center Services, Structured
Some business disruptions are difficult, if not impossible, to come back from without significant tried-and-tested contingency planning. One of those incidents is data loss, be it through human error, a software or hardware failure, or a malicious attack via ransomware.
The best way to protect your business from severe data loss is by developing and testing a secure backup and disaster recovery system in advance of a crisis.
As a Senior System Engineer at Structured, I’ve seen my fair share of businesses with flaws in their security, backup and recovery systems, resulting in damaging loss. Yet, I’ve also seen plenty of businesses recover quickly and move forward to bigger and better things.
The difference between these businesses? One typically takes advantage of the 3-2-1-1-0 data protection rule when it comes to safeguarding data. The other does not. I bet you can guess which one more often experiences a successful outcome.
What Is the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule?
The well-known industry 3-2-1 backup rule is a great place to start. Yet, Veeam, the global leader in data protection, recommends following a new “3-2-1-1-0 Rule” to better protect your data:
- 3 copies of data
- 2 different media types
- 1 off-site copy
- 1 of which is offline, air-gapped or immutable
- 0 errors on tested, verified and recoverable copies
The Bottom Line: Your Off-Site Data Should Be Stored in the Cloud
To complete the “1” step in the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule, you must store one of the copies of your data off-site. Here at Structured, we believe you should store this backup in the cloud. (Certain Veeam-powered Cloud Service Providers [CSPs] can also deliver air-gapping to guarantee immutability – the other “1” step.)
Why? With a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solution, a relatively speedy recovery time objective (RTO) threshold is easily attainable. Plus, a near-zero recovery point objective is possible, versus the 2- or 4-hour window for legacy backup solutions.
Those seconds and minutes matter a lot. According to often-cited statistics from Gartner dating back to 2014, the average cost of IT downtime was $5600 per minute, and 98 percent of businesses reported that an hour of downtime would cost more than $100,000. Among those, a subsection of 33 percent stated that an hour of downtime costs their organizations somewhere between $1 million and $5 million. It is not unreasonable to calculate that the cost of downtime could be even more expensive today.
To combat this loss, the cloud can deliver relatively rapid disaster recovery – saving time, money, and potentially the entire business — when data repositories can keep running in production mode on the CSP’s dedicated compute, storage and networking resources.
Veeam® Cloud Connect: Secure Backup & DR to the Cloud of Your Choice
Veeam’s modern data protection platform delivers advanced capabilities for data resilience through continuous data protection (CDP), storage snapshots, backup and replication. Its Cloud Connect service, a key component of Veeam® Backup & Replication™ v11, simplifies the process for sending backups and replicas to a CSP and managing them inside of that infrastructure.
As a result, you can effectively protect your data — and more quickly recover from disruption — without incurring the large costs associated with building and managing your own redundant site.
Through Cloud Connect, you can meet the challenges of disaster recovery and data backup head-on.
1. Protect Your Data From Threats and Failures
A secure backup solution can protect your data from all kinds of internal and external threats. This includes cyberattacks like ransomware, natural disasters, and even inadvertent human error – the most frequent cause of downtime.
And even if you are the unicorn who never encounters an external threat – and whose team never makes a mistake – there are always equipment failures to contend with. Hard drives fail. Data corrupts. These damages can be devastating, too.
Veeam® Cloud Connect helps you mitigate the risk and expense of downtime. The software’s easy-to-use console enables you to easily migrate data between clouds and on-premises environments with just a few clicks, including when the system is a distributed datacenter, a branch office, a workstation, or even a mobile endpoint.
2. Enjoy Simple and Efficient Data Protection with Confidence
Cloud Connect helps eliminate the need to build and manage a second infrastructure or manually back up your data. Instead, all you do is select your cloud provider from Veeam’s large network of CSPs and point your backups and replica jobs there. Veeam provides end-to-end protection, with data being encrypted every step of the way – at rest or in-flight.
Better still, Veeam® SureBackup™ is the tool to use to test your backups before a disrupting event, giving you confidence that you have a secure, immutable, accurate and recoverable backup of your entire data repository.
3. Achieve Full or Partial Recovery AT the speed you need
In the event of a data disaster in your production environment, Cloud Connect helps you quickly spin up the backups or replicas housed at your CSP to keep your organization moving forward. Using the compute, storage and networking resources of your CSP, you can enjoy lightning-fast RTOs and pinpointed RPOs even when your on-prem infrastructure is ruined.
Take Advantage of Veeam® Cloud Connect With Structured
Veeam Cloud Connect is efficient and cost-effective, as well as storage, application, and OS-agnostic. It’s a great way to facilitate data management, easily letting you move backups and replica jobs to an off-site, fully managed location. In the event of an outage, you have the ability to restore and recover in minutes after any disaster.
Plus, Cloud Connect comes with simple, straightforward licensing and pricing as a part of Veeam Backup and Replication v11.
Structured is proud to partner with Veeam to provide data security and recovery to organizations of every size, from SMBs to large enterprises. Through Structured, you can offload your data protection and disaster recovery needs to a specialized, globalized, and compliant service provider.
Learn More About Disaster Recovery by Contacting Structured Today
You shouldn’t wait until disaster strikes to take data recovery and backup seriously. By then, it may be too late.
Take advantage of the 3-2-1-1-0 rule by reaching out to Structured today for expert data protection and disaster recovery guidance. Learn more about our services by calling us at 800-881-0962 or send us a message.
About the Author
Darrell Bowmer has more than 25 years of experience in analysis, design, implementation, troubleshooting and administration of IT systems. He has provided business leadership and senior-level technical expertise for high-visibility, mission-critical projects, including the design and deployment of disaster recovery architectures. Darrell is experienced in SAN architectures and enterprise data protection strategies, including those for public, private and multicloud environments. Darrell is actively engaged in providing traditional data center and cloud data center project consulting services, as well as business continuity and organizational resilience planning.
Darrell has earned numerous credentials throughout his career from industry-leading vendors like Pure Storage, HPE, Zerto, Cohesity, Citrix and Veeam, including the Veeam Technical Sales Professional (VMTSP) 2021.