Tag Archives: Cloud Backup

How Can you Overcome Storage Management Challenges?

November 6, 2015 Rob Mackle

Enterprises have noticed an increase in data volumes of up to 60% on a yearly basis. Hardware limitations can also make it more difficult to deal with such volume of data effectively. Proper planning, effective technology and talented staff are required to tackle the issue. The situation becomes even worst due to regulatory compliance and virtualization technology laws.

Effective storage administrators introduce new policies, put into practise helpful tools for resource management, and use financial resources for capacity planning. Before initiating all these jobs, they need to recognise the types of data, relevant applications, storage requirements, and then they need to review all of their policies in order to have an effective storage system in place.

Data administrators work to recognise factors responsible for data growth. Consequently, they will understand all the factors and will be able to answers questions of when, what, why, where and how of data storage. Storage environments are not similar; they differ in their size, requirements and architecture. It is necessary to understand queries, such as “What is driving data growth?”, “What type of tools do you need?”, “What are storage policies and when these were evaluated?”

Visibility and ease of access are the two major driving forces that work behind data storage. When data is visible properly, it helps storage administrators to identify certain problems associated with data storage. Consequently, they select right technologies that are suitable. Moreover, they update technology to check data paths and avoid blockage at certain positions where data growth is maximised.

Storage administrators use capacity planning in order to determine data storage requirements for a limited period of time. They can determine on various kinds of storage, time limit for storage (retention period), data growth projections, and which data must be stored in offline and/or online data repositories. It depends on storage managers to select technology for allocating the right amount of data to given applications. Usually, thin provisioning approach is selected by most storage administrators, as it helps in assigning the exact amount of capacity at the right time.

Capacity planning works in collaboration with reclaiming assets. Administrators need to reclaim, from time to time, underused or unused storage space. Data experts estimate that up to 15 percent more physical storage space can be freed up if unclaimed storage is used properly.

Data disasters are always in mind of storage administrators, therefore, they introduce strategies to strike against unexpected situations. It is the reason why storage management makes it easy to manage disasters. Skilled administrators take automatic snapshots of critical information of business data and design standards for reliable recovery before disasters strike. It is their job to continually monitor backups and simulate recovery scenarios through backed up data. It gives surety that the storage administrators are competent enough to handle disaster conditions.

Due to the presence of cloud data storage, it becomes possible to think about new data storage and delivery techniques. Enterprises that are using cloud computing services have reduced their operational and capital costs. In addition to low cost, they have enhanced flexibility to store and access data. Cloud storage plays a very important role in overcoming storage management challenges. It enables security, control, business resiliency, visibility, and automation of cloud backup and recovery.

Assess Cloud Storage Services Before Actually Using Them

November 4, 2015 Callum Huddlestone

While cloud backups and storage and recovery solutions are great for your organisation, it is important for you to know that it is not without limitations. For that reason, SMBs that are currently planning to move to the cloud must take some time and check the advantages and disadvantages associated with cloud backup services before migrating to the cloud. So, the extent at which the pros associated with cloud storage outweigh the cons, will determine your decision whether to jump in the waggon and ride the cloud or not.

Cloud backup and storage has been made an interactive backup and storage option suitable for both small, medium and enterprise organisations through bandwidth and capacity optimisation technologies, and multi-tenant architectures on the Internet. There is integration of range of business continuity solutions with the concept of server abstraction; and provision of high availability of critical workloads are the product of the solutions generated in the cloud. This will also facilitate the speeding up of time to market by using highly developed file imaging and site recovery options, coupled with all-embracing interoperability and best practises.

Cloud backup and storage service providers use high-tech tools in order to meet with the needs and demands of their customers. The migrations, upgrades and outdated technology are abstracted to the level of the service provider, giving users the freedom to enjoy data storage as a measurable utility with easy payment option. There are lots of security services that are made available at the price of subscription to the customers in the cloud and some of them include: file compression, disk based backup, encryption, duplication of data, server and storage virtualisation, application of particular security, and tiered storage using security authorisation. Some of the service providers improve their service by incorporating 24/7 customer support, which helps to intimate the customer against any form of security violations.

As cloud services are based on the Internet, the service consumer may not really be in control of the service level agreement (SLA) or even performance guarantees. Limitation of bandwidth is capable of making storage and data recovery a tedious and difficult task. There may be problems with exit strategy if the organisation decides to pull out from the agreement. Termination fees, cancellation charges, data extraction costs are the possible issues you may face. That is why you need to examine the SLAs before signing on the dotted lines.

Therefore, SMBs should embark on a though assessment of cloud services before hitching their waggon to the cloud. You can get competitive edge in your niche and also redefine your company just with effective planning and implementation in the cloud. It is recommended that you embrace the cloud, but ensure that you are entering this market being vigilant and alert. Therefore, you should not migrate to the cloud without getting a real understanding of what you are engaging your company into, as well as the potential disadvantages and advantages associated with cloud services.

At Backup Technology, we are always ready to assist you in your efforts to migrate to the cloud by taking the time and advising you at all levels. We will help you get over bandwidth issues by seeding your initial data to our servers with no hidden fees, with clearly spelt out SLAs.

Why Does Backup Technology Choose to Partner with Asigra?

November 2, 2015 Damien Garvey

Asigra is a disk based cloud backup and recovery software known for its certainty, dependability, as well as its ability to guarantee absolute security. It has been placed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Disk-based Backup and Recovery in the recent reports. Among the enormous parameters that were considered for this placement was its military grade security feature. Asigra is, therefore, known as the best and most reliable backup and recovery software ever.

Asigra is unique due to its more than a quarter of a century presence in the industry of cloud backup and recovery. It has provided users with quality software since 1986, without any form of breach. Due to the fact that this software does not support open firewall ports, data stored in it cannot be hacked. The data in the data centres is stored in encrypted format, and all the files and blocked data are signed digitally.

There is a built in system admin with logical check features, and with background automated healing, which made the data stored in it to be in self-describing format. In addition, in order to protect the data against any form of compromise, the digital signatures are checked and validated regularly. Asigra is acknowledged rightly so as one of the pioneers in cloud backup encryption. Asigra is only channel driven. As such, service provides have been championing Asigra software by offering it as part of their packaged services. Asigra partners are known to be on top of their game and beat the competition.

Asigra’s encryption algorithm is FIPS certified. Encryption of data takes place from DS Client to DS System, edge to cloud, disk to archive, and is retained encrypted at the end point of the storage. There are lots of encryption protocols associated with Asigra software and customers have a choice of encryption, including: DES 56 bit with an 8-character key to AES 256 bit with 32-character key.

Additionally, Asigra software has the capability for users to retrieve their data that was encrypted with older encryption formats. There is also an option for management of the encryption key. The administrator can either self-manage or optionally allow the service provider to manage the static encryption key, which was generated at the point of subscription for the service.

Asigra security has user authentication as its central focus. For easy user definition, there are elaborate user management features. The central administrator can easily assign user IDs, rights, permissions, and passwords. The password generation and rotation features associated with Asigra software can be useful to organizations that are security conscious. For specific back up user, password can be changed randomly in order to make access to the data very secure. The entire activity of users can be logged in and tracked at the central location.

This wonderful backup and recovery software is designed for existing legal provisions and greater compliance. The automated disk based solution is known to run quietly at the background without intervention of a human being. Asigra allows the generation of aggregated data for offsite storage, on premises appliance-based backup, and the opportunity for instant recovery.

Backup Technology is proud to be Asigra’s partner since 2005 and a 3D Hybrid partner since 2010. For more information, please visit Asigra’s website: www.asigra.com

Making Administration of Compliance Easy

October 30, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Compliance has been made frightening to most organizations through multiple regulatory mandates. It is now a difficult and tedious task to organize a product for SOX and PCI or HIPAA compliance. The manual workaround, auditing failures as well as intimidating pressure of disciplinary action under various acts makes gradual compliance unreasonable and undesirable. Therefore, enterprises are longing for easy compliance that are highly automated, tightly integrated, extensive, scalable and reliable solutions. Cloud computing services that incorporate superior capabilities, at the same time allow you to be in control of proliferating information and compliance requirements are now in high demand.

Automated cloud service that enable data collection, benchmark mapping, change of tracking, and report are designed to make auditing simple and easy, for both inside or outside the enterprise. For legal compliance, upbeat and proactive controls are created. In addition, they allow numerous compliance management and bring easy, centralized structure that permit definition of policy, as well as computerized compliance auditing process across platforms and environments. There is also provision of extensive library policies that set rules tackling some problems associated with compliance, which is built into some of the computing solutions in the cloud. This can be beneficial for automatically defining and scanning results on the dashboard that share similarity with the specific legal mandates. The outcome is that simplified compliance and permits viewing of data at a glance.

Majority cloud backup and storage systems come with uninterrupted features that burn out users that are unauthorized and tracks user’s activities. Changes to files, directories, registry keys, and provision of visible and immediate checkmating so as to avoid incident that may result in data compromise are kept by file integrity monitory software. The read and write protection and reconciliation maps in cloud backup systems, which follow changes to the original system, safeguarding sufficient security. For that reason, there is a reduction in management complexities while security is vastly made stronger.

Below are the functions of computing services in the cloud which you need to know:

– Help to centralize data management for the purpose of policy inspection, strategy, and reporting;
– Provide uninterrupted change management and integrity of configuration;
– Permit integration of software to prevent hosting intrusion, management against vulnerability, and control of application.

Users of cloud computing can be made aware of the incessant compliance expectations with uninterrupted visibility. With the help of cloud computing, labour intensive mistakes, errors of disconnected compliance products can be avoided. In addition, there is absolute reduction in the cost of compliance, as well as dramatic reduction in the complexity of operation with the help of cloud compliance. In fact, there are more to the benefits associated with cloud computing than what we have discussed above.

Asigra, the Best Cloud Backup Software, Powers BTL

October 28, 2015 Kris Price

In case you have not heard about Asigra, a disk to disk (D2D) data backup and vaulting solution, this article will introduce you. Asigra solution has been designed to address lots of serious compliance needs and provide data protection that is cost-effective. Its effortless software manages data life cycles, as well as allows a speedy recovery of data. Organizations may need to change their remote site backup or recovery procedures that based on legacy tape with high-tech and innovative backup systems that focus mainly on security of data in flight and at rest. Among the things that make Asigra software exceptional cloud backup solution include: hard coded security, agentless solution, and WAN optimization techniques.

The unique selling proposition (USP) for Asigra is its FIPS 140 certified cryptographic model. For refined security, Asigra encrypts data on the fly and stores it in the vaults in an encrypted format. Since Asigra’s launch in 1986, data stored under its software have never had any breach. In addition, there are no open firewall ports in Asigra and that is why is has never been hacked. Among the strengths of Asigra include: user authentication, encryption, role based access, secure offsite storage, as well as the granular level reports.

Asigra handles security and data privacy with second to none technology and provides protection for the major concerns of laws like: Data Protection Act, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and HIPAA. Asigra makes sure that data is captured properly and accurately. It ensures that data is processed lawfully and access is limited to only authorized personnel in the organization. There is also definition of data process that does not go against the rights of the data owner. In order to ensure that all stipulations and provisions are adhered to, this disk to disk data vaulting solution enables data protection officers to speedily and simply answer to queries of data owners and establish periodic checks.

It important for you to know that Asigra Televaulting solution flawlessly protects and combines local, remote or branch office data to meet the terms on all the aforementioned legal mandates. In order to make it easy for organizations to comply with the regulatory acts that have long-term retention periods, such as the OSHA*, Asigra offers secure long-term data retention. For legal discovery and compliance, Asigra allows a much faster data access and recovery. Really, Asigra’s data lifecycle management technology makes sure that data that need to be destroyed is dealt with swiftly using proper controls of primary data preservation policies.

Asigra architecture has been recognized by industry experts as a leading cloud backup and storage solution with many industry-firsts in the areas of computerization, efficiency and security. This helps to reduce boring backup jobs and puts onsite and offsite data capture in place easily, migrate data from local servers to cloud based servers, and formation of backup strategies that are compliant. Asigra also provides the user with absolute control over backed up data, and also accommodates changes in strategies.

We, at Backup Technology Limited (BTL), are proud to be a 3D Hybrid Partner of Asigra since 2010. Please visit Asigra’s website for more information – www.asigra.com.

* http://goo.gl/wBJLbU

Facts about Suitable Cloud Strategies

October 26, 2015 Rob Mackle

There is confusion on the murmur and blare surrounding cloud computing these days. CIOs and cloud strategists in an organization may find it very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, at the same time, adopt the right cloud strategy for their organization. For that reason, this article is dedicated to providing you with few guidelines which can be beneficial while defining the required and suitable cloud strategies for your organization.

It is a must for cloud strategists to describe cloud service value in their environment, and explain the needs for their business into viable strategies. This means, strategists need to do thorough analysis of the prevailing IT environment, build road map, and create desirable service level chart for incremental progress to the cloud. The strategists must also create recommendations about key performance indicators (KPIs) as well as layer data lifecycle management around these services using with regard to privacy, compliance, and security.

Obviously, it is advised to avoid designing cloud strategy focusing only on technology. The needs of the business and the business it self should be the focus while designing the cloud strategy. To be encouraged to build cloud strategy with business needs in focus, strategists need to ask the following questions:

– In which way will moving to the cloud benefit the business?
– Does a positive trade-off ever exist between cloud computing options and local storage options?

Honestly, the answers they will get from the two questions above will serve as a succor in maintaining an approach that is level headed to the strategy at the same time building a strong foundation for evolution that will last for long period of time both toward the cloud options and cloud like options that they plan to mature within a given year. For the cloud strategists planning suitable strategy for an organization, there must be a good understanding of the kind of strategy available in the cloud, and making use of that knowledge to find out and utilize the appropriate kind of cloud technology for the benefit of the enterprise. The three main categories of cloud services, which you need to know, include:

– Platform as a service (PaaS) which is responsible for provision of platforms for programming as well as building blocks or tools for APIs that help in creating application and services that are based in the cloud.
– Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the ability for managing, owing or even controlling the essential infrastructure. In order to scale up available IT hardware resources within an organization, infrastructure may be rented.
– Software as a service (SaaS) exposes applications as a service that is running in the cloud infrastructure.

In order to create a cloud strategy that is personalized to the business needs of organization, there may be a need for cloud-strategists to combine one or more of the options available services.

It is important for cloud strategists to go beyond mere theoretical definitions of the the cloud, and focus their attention on making use of convincing analysis so as to deduce a clearer fit between economic and risk profiles, which exist in variety of business situations and make cloud offerings — including cloud storage and cloud backup — to stand out as among the technology strategies of the organization.