Tech.knowledge.me - March 2009

Curing the Data Disaster Disease

by David Mayne

     In this age of information dependence and the digital storage of essential corporate intellectual assets, the tape backup system relied upon by so many businesses for years is fast becoming the ‘cure that is worse than the disease’, as statistics defining the failure ratio of tapes and downtime show clearly that recovering from either hardware failure or real catastrophic failure can cost a business thousands of dollars in hardware and lost productivity, as well as opening the door to liability issues in the case of lost data.

    Much as the VCR is quietly fading away as DVD and Blu-ray technology replaces tape, so too are businesses looking for alternatives to the cumbersome, often resource-draining backup systems they have been using for years, and a new age of disaster recovery technology is dawning.

    ITech Las Vegas, is one of many companies banking on the increasing needs of businesses of all sizes to maintain intellectual property, client data, billing histories, medical information and has developed a “Business Continuity System” (BCS) that incorporates both a proprietary hardware appliance and offsite secured storage to enable disaster recovery that can be completed, in many cases, in under an hour, compared to the oftentimes days lost with the older tape backup systems.

    “The days of false security are over” says Mark Rouleau, president of ITech Las Vegas.  “Most people don’t realize backing up to tape is easily corrupted. Make an error and the tapes are worthless, yet you can change the tape everyday thinking that you’re okay.  And if you need to send your hard drive to a lab for data recovery, you can expect to pay $10,000 to $25,000 with no guarantee that the data will be recovered.”

    An emphasis on business continuity is the impetus behind the development of the BCS appliance central to its disaster recovery program. Responding to weaknesses in the 25 year old tape backup technology, including the failure or corruption of up to 60% of backup tapes (according to many experts), the onsite BCS appliance enables the client company to substitute the appliance itself as the production server should the physical server suffer a hardware failure, giving the client company time to research the problem and find a solution or even replace the physical server that crashed.  

    Even complex server problems can be minimized with the client system up and running in under an hour with this type of appliance in place. Incremental backups are more beneficial under the digital system, allowing a company to minimize its potential losses to a maximum of fifteen minutes of work, since incremental backups are done automatically throughout the day.

    Developing cutting edge techniques for minimizing catastrophic losses to businesses becomes even more important in today’s economic climate.  Historically, in difficult economic times theft and loss instances increase, making servers prolific targets for both personal and corporate identity thieves.  “Server hardware is easily replaced, but the loss of business data, including client records and billing information, can topple a company” said Rouleau.

    As companies tighten their belts, it is imperative that business owners and IT pros alike stay abreast of any technology that will cure the ills of inefficient disaster recovery.