Effective backup and recovery systems are an essential component of all information technology environments to protect against the loss of information and enable the timely restoration of critical business services.

Loss of information can occur in many ways including:

• Accidental deletion of data
• Accidental overwrite of data
• Malware activity
• Software errors
• Intentional deletion by disgruntled employees
• Hardware failure
• Hardware theft
• Water damage, fire, fusion

Some of these events can result in prolonged interruptions to service availability.

Openet can provide advice on the selection of the most appropriate backup and restoration model for your organisation. Such a solution may include one or more of the following:

• On-site tape-based backup
• On-site disk-based backup
• Off-site / ‘cloud’ backup
• Choosing the best fit-for-purpose backup and restoration solution may not always be a straightforward decision.

Factors that must be considered include:

• Volume of data/rate of change
• Available time to perform the backup or recovery
• Capital expenditure versus operating expenditure
• Integration with disaster recovery/business continuity plans
• Archival / retention policies / legal obligations
• Operating system/application system backup (in addition to data)
• Security of backed up data