Using the Cloud for Backup, Archiving & Disaster Recovery Steve Pelletier Solution Architect

Definitions Data Backup Disaster Recovery (DR) Data Archiving Copying data in an efficient manner so that it can be restored in the event of a data loss event. Disaster Recovery (DR) A set of policies, tools and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human induced disaster. Data Archiving The process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a separate storage device for long-term retention. Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons.

Backup and Recovery 3-2-1 Rule Typical Implementations Keep three copies of your data. Keep data on at least two different media types. Keep one copy offsite. Data stored offsite, with a third party should be encrypted. Typical Implementations Disk to disk to tape Tape management Disk to disk to disk Facilities costs Disk to tape Speed of recovery

Backup and Recovery Methods Backup Retention Full Backups Full + Differential Full + Incremental Incremental forever + Synthetic Full Backup Retention Typically 30-90 days Most restores are from data that is less than 30 days old

Data Archiving Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons. Typically retained for years. Regulations may require write one read many (WORM) storage or immutable data. Typically, not all data needs to be archived. Data needs to be durable, able to be recovered after extended periods of storage. Durability requires copying archived data as media ages or technology becomes obsolete. To protect against disasters there should be multiple copies of archived data in separate locations.

Data Archiving Archive data consists of older data that remains important to the organization or must be retained for future reference or regulatory compliance reasons. Typically retained for years. To protect against disasters there should be multiple copies of archived data in separate locations. Often implemented as part of the Backup solution. May require every version of certain files to be archived. LOTS OF DATA / Potentially very high costs. Archived data should be destroyed once it is no longer needed.

Disaster Recovery Key Concepts RTO – Recovery Time Objective How fast do you need to be able to restore each server. Varies from instantaneous to does not need to be recovered. How much does it cost the organization for each hour each server isn’t available. RPO – Recovery Point Objective The age of files that must be recovered from backup storage for normal operations to resume in the event of a disaster. How much data can the organization afford to lose on each server. Typically measured in minutes or hours and varies from zero minutes to twenty-four hours.

Disaster Recovery Key Concepts High Availability (HA) Fault Tolerant The goal of ensuring your critical systems are always functioning. In practice, this means creating and managing the ability to automatically “failover” to a secondary system if the primary system goes down for any reason as well as eliminating all single points of failure from your infrastructure. Very short RTO and near zero RPO. Fault Tolerant A computer system or technology infrastructure that is designed in such a way that when one component fails (be it hardware or software), a backup component takes over operations immediately so that there is no loss of service. Zero RPO and zero RTO.

Disaster Recovery Methods and Tools From backups BackupExec Commvault Veeam … Continuous Replication Zerto Double Take HA/DR Geo-Clustering Log shipping SAN based replication Synchronous Asynchronous

Disaster Recovery Recovery Sites Considerations Company owned facility Ease of connectivity Very expensive (CapEx/OpEx) Not an option for everyone Third party DR site provider (Sungard) Very expensive (OpEx) Requires travel for testing and recovery Cloud Cost effective (OpEx) Considerations Getting data to DR site for recovery Connectivity to/from DR Site End user access to servers Consider remote desktop solution

Cloud Storage Buckets, Blobs, and Objects Typically keeps a minimum of three copies of all data in different locations 99.999999999% (Eleven nines) durability If you store 10 million objects, you can expect to lose one object every 10 thousand years. Only pay for what you are using Dynamically scales Available in multiple cost tiers based upon Amount of data reads Speed of returning data Availability Facilities to automate movement of data between tiers Data must stay in a tier for at least 30 days or penalties may apply

Cloud Storage Pricing model Tier

Cloud Storage Storage Gateways NAS SAN VTL – Virtual Tape Library Provides a local file share, NFS or SMB, that caches files locally and also sends them to cloud storage. Data is encrypted in flight and can be encrypted in the cloud storage. SAN Provides local iSCSI LUNs. Replicates LUNs to cloud storage. VTL – Virtual Tape Library Provides an industry standard iSCSI tape library interface. Can cache recently used tapes locally.

Backup to Cloud Storage Done with either a VTL or NAS storage gateway. Retain 30 to 90 days of backups depending on company policies. Backup data is typically, but not always written to the most expensive tier of Object storage initially, to reduce or eliminate cost associated with recovering the data. After 30 days the backup data is either deleted or migrated to a less expensive tier of storage. Backup data may be written to different buckets or blobs to facilitate data archiving. Highly durable offsite storage with no tape handling fees.

Archiving to Cloud Storage Can be done by properly configuring backup to cloud storage and using policies to move the proper data to the least expensive tier of cloud storage as it ages out of the backup policies. For data that requires all versions of files to be kept for compliance purposes a NAS storage gateway can be used for local storage that is replicated to cloud storage. Versioning can be turned on for the cloud storage to ensure that all changes to the data are kept. The buckets or blobs used for archiving can be configured as WORM, write one, read many, for compliance. Policies can be set to automatically delete data once it is no longer needed. Data can be encrypted.

Disaster Recovery Using Cloud Resources Ideal for workloads that are virtualized or are capable of being virtualized. Only viable for X86 based servers with most cloud providers. Possible issues with servers that need to communicate with on premise equipment. A remote desktop solution should be considered.

Disaster Recovery Using Cloud Resources Can utilize offsite backups which are being sent to cloud storage In most cases the only ongoing fees are required for cloud based storage. Compute resources are only required and paid for during an actual declared disaster or during a DR test. Continuous replication solutions may require minimal ongoing compute resources in addition to cloud storage. Geo-Clustering Requires an always on compute footprint since this is an HA solution SAN based replication Possible in some scenarios, but typically not a fit for cloud based DR.

Summary Using cloud storage for offsite backups is cost effective and reduces overall management requirements. Backups to cloud storage can act as a foundation for both data archiving and disaster recovery solutions. Cloud based solutions provide functionality that scales up and down with your company’s needs. Cloud based solutions provide a high level of automation which makes disaster recovery easier and faster.

Questions? Steve Pelletier Solution Architect spelletier@edci.com 920-882-1981