Backing up Big Data: How Cloud Backup Can Help You Secure Your Big Data
Playing in the big leagues
When you start handling data sizes in the petabyte category, you are far beyond the traditional back up capabilities. You see, traditional methods were not designed to handle millions of small files all at once so you may cause quite some havoc with your big data here.
For any business today, information is as critical as capital. Information about your clients, finances, transactions, products and services, all need to be within reach upon demand. You cannot afford to have downtime, or even worse, data loss if you expect to remain in business. This is why protecting your data is paramount.
How to protect your data
Companies often look to data centers to handle their large amounts of data. So when you go out looking for solutions to your big data storage issue, there are three things that are really irreducible minimums when it comes to data storage.
- No data loss
As mentioned earlier, data loss is something any business owner should avoid at all costs. You need to ensure that the data center has continuous data protection systems in place as well as a strong recovery system that will guarantee that you will get your data back.
- Prompt recovery
Recovery of data should not only be guaranteed but it should be done within the shortest amount of time possible. Time is money in the business world and every minute lost waiting for data recovery to be completed could be costing you thousands of dollars or new customers. So make sure your service provider can get the data back as it was and fast!
- Full disclosure
This can also be referred to as complete visibility. The fact that this company is handling your data doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be completely aware of any and all changes to that data. You need to be given full access to all of your company’s data. You should also be alerted and aware of any issues before any decisions are made about the data.
How do you get all these?
The key to getting all these services is looking for a data center with three characteristics: virtualization, modern storage systems and cloud. These will determine if and how well you will get the three services above.
Cloud capabilities are important because they allow you to back up a copy of your data over a public or private network to a server that is hosted by another service provider. The server is off-site and its use carries some charges to the customer, in this case the data center, based on capacity and bandwidth. Back up can be done daily and it is better suited for non-critical data that is not used on a daily basis.
The fact is, the misconception that big data is difficult to handle is simply that. It is possible to find a data center that will offer you great service with your data. What is important is to be clear about what you need from them and what they can offer you. That way, you can make an informed decision as to whether you want to move forward with them or not.