Enterprise software and IT service spend is predicted to grow at an average of 5.9% globally in 2017 and with new strategies and goals for the year ahead, organisations need to have IT resources available that can scale to meet their growing needs.

The success of an organisation can lead to “growing pains” within IT, new users, software and programs will generate new sources of data which will need to be administered and audited correctly.

Redstor’s Backup Pro solution is a simple to deploy, fully scalable solution that can keep up with growing data sets and ensure successful backups. On-demand backup will make sure that a backup never fails, should a new user, device or server be added for selection.

Resolutions aside, Redstor look at the tips and advice for a successful backup and data management strategy in 2017.

Backup

We’ve been doing it for almost 20 years; with thousands of customers across multiple verticals, it’s safe to say we’ve learned a thing or two.

• Aligning your backup selection and retention policies with business requirements and reviewing them periodically is a must. Focusing on what’s important and being mindful that the relative value of data can change over time will be a useful auditing tool for your business in 2017 and beyond.
• Building an infrastructure that is flexible enough to accommodate disparate needs with respect to recovery time and recovery point objectives, is likely to save you time in the long run.
• Develop and TEST a recovery process. This is something that can be overlooked when choosing and implementing a backup solution and process but it is a vital step to ensure recovery should a disaster ever strike.
• Secure and index backed up data offsite. Seems obvious, right? Having taken the time to back up data, particularly to portable media (tape), it’s essential to move it away from source to a secure location. A secure location where the correct information can be accessed quickly for a restore.

Top companies will have annual testing across all aspects of a backup and recovery process, which will be documented and refined based on the evidence of test sessions. They will also understand the need to prioritise data for restore.

These plans and processes need to be accessible at all times, it’s no use having a disaster recovery plan that has been destroyed or lost in the disaster.

Data Management

• Categorising data based on their value to the business will help to define the appropriate management strategies. These can include, what data is kept, where it is kept, how it is protected and how long it is kept for.
• Appoint Data Managers, individuals who have responsibility for a particular data set on behalf of a department or other organisational unit.
• Consider using storage quotas; It may be necessary to enforce data management policies where a user community cannot police itself. These can be an effective way to manage or prevent over-usage.

Archiving and automation are also two of the best tools in a data manager’s arsenal. Although backup and archiving can often be confused, effective archiving can be used to manage “cold” data that still needs to be retained.

Automating processes with hardware and software solutions will help classify data and will directly help to determine policies.

Whether its backup and data management or something else, Redstor’s roadmap relies on feedback from our customers to develop new and exciting functionality.