Data Protection for Higher Education – Evaluating Retention Periods, RTOs and Acceptable Data Loss

Gary Parker, Sr. Product Marketing Manager

Data protection is no easy feat in the world of higher education. Recognizing retention periods for varying sets of data, determining required recovery times for each set, and mitigating data loss can be daunting tasks. Not to mention, you are often protecting a wide array of data while supporting thousands of users that range from those who are just sending personal emails to those conducting the most delicate of research projects And, when something goes wrong, it’s likely you’ll be inundated with a flood of complaints.

But instead of focusing on a reactive situation, let’s turn our attention to the objective of complaint prevention.

The very simple steps of a thorough data protection strategy are so often overlooked. Where does an IT professional supporting a higher education institution really need to start? It’s more than just understanding your data sets. Your team should really put the following in writing for each set and adhere to it:

1. Retention period
2. Recovery time objectives
3. Amount of acceptable data loss

Let’s take a quick look at retention periods for a typical academic computing environment. Thinking this through will help you get data to the correct, most cost-effective storage medium and determine your method for storing it on that medium. You will likely have at least some of the following data sets. As an example, I asked BakBone customer, Martin Frankhouse at University of Detroit Mercy, for an overview of his typical retention periods, knowing that these definitely vary from institution to institution.

1. Student Activities – 90 days
2. Student email – 90 days
3. Course content – 3 years
4. Catalogs – 10 years plus
5. Grades – Decades
6. Research Projects – Potentially decades

Recovery time objectives could actually run on the same scale as your retention periods. For example, student email may have a short retention period and likely have a short recovery time objective. It may not be important enough for long term storage, but you better be able to get it back up and running fast in the event of downtime.

Podcast – A Quick Guide to Data Classification with Storage Expert Ray Lucchesi

Ray Lucchesi, President of Silverton Consulting

5 min 16 sec

In this Experts & Insights podcast,  Gary Parker, senior PMM at BakBone, talks to Storage Expert Ray Lucchesi of Silverton Consulting about data classification. Ray shares with us how to create a data classification strategy that safeguards your business based on the value of its data. This podcast also explores how to determine the value of data by evaluating the real Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO); how to work with users to create classes of data such as Static, Business-Vital and Mission-Critical; and how to assign storage software and hardware systems based on the class of data to gain maximum use of resources.

SQL Server Magazine Readers Vote BakBone as Silver Community Choice Award Winner

A big thank you goes out to the readers of SQL Server Magazine for voting NetVault: Backup into a Silver “medal” as this year’s Community Choice for Best Backup and Recovery Product. According to Michele Crockett, SQL Server Magazine editorial strategy director, “The 2009 Community Choice Awards had a record number of entries this year. Thousands of products were nominated by our audience of IT professionals. Our Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine communities even the playing field by calling out their favorite products based on performance and service. We counted only those votes accompanied by a valid and unique email address, thereby preventing multiple entries per person. Our winners have earned a unique honor to stand out among their peers as winners of our Community Choice Awards.” Our NetVault: Backup Application Plugin Module for SQL Server reduces the complexity of protecting SQL Server because it works from a console and does not require scripting. Learn more about why SQL Server Magazine readers voted for our SQL data protection capabilities by checking: http://www.bakbone.com/protection_sql.php http://www.bakbone.com/netvault_fastrecover.php http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/103178/sql_server_103178.html

Off-Site Tape Backup Rotation Strategies

Gary Parker

The entire IT world knows that we need to protect our data, but there are always questions on how. I want to talk about a strategy for storing backup off-site on tapes. I realize that tape backup is only one of several different approaches, and that your requirements may differ, but we’ll stick to the basics in this discussion.

One common method is based on a simple rotation from daily backups, so someone comes in every morning, takes a backup tape and then stores it in a safe location. The location however, may not be appropriate or safe and should be evaluated. One backup consultant heard of a customer who would take the tapes and put them in his desk drawer where he felt it was safe because the office door was always locked at night. Or another in which the tapes were stored in the trunk of the IT administrator’s car all week…. in Arizona! A safe place should always be temperature-controlled and off-site in case of a disaster.

There is a higher upfront cost to keep several copies of media off-site, but the security of properly protecting your data will always be the best choice.

You also need to bring the appropriate amount of data off-site. So if you are simply rotating one backup every day this can leave you vulnerable since you only have one roll back point from the previous night. Many people in the industry have used the strategy of Grandfather, Father, Son when it comes to backups and that approach still works as a basic way of protecting data. The way it works is that you do an incremental or differential backup every weekday and take that off-site, and continue to do this all week. At the end of the week you take a full backup, designate it as a weekly and bring all previous daily backups on-site for reuse. Continue this each week until the first week of the next month where you will keep your last full weekly as a monthly and then bring back all previous weekly’s for reuse.

Now you will then keep each monthly and rotate them back every 12, 18 or 36 months, depending on your requirements (don’t confuse these with archive tapes – that is another subject!). This strategy gives you flexibility to roll back to several points in time where the data is still intact or free from corruption by viruses. There is a higher upfront cost to keep several copies of media off-site, but the security of properly protecting your data will always be the best choice.

Disk-based backup is also a key element of data protection, and I will tackle the value of disk-based backup in a future discussion.

Strategic Market Analysis in Tight Times – Doing More with Less

Gary Parker

The current recession is a lot like the weather – everyone talks about it, but it is really challenging to try to do something about it. I surveyed 330 companies to find out how they are handling the current recession. Yesterday at the Software Business 2009 conference in San Diego I presented these findings.

I wanted to understand how companies were responding to the current recession, reduced budgets and smaller IT staffs in order to learn how to help our customers in tough economic times. I did this through a survey with high tech product managers to learn how their companies were responding to the current recession. The survey, sponsored by the 280 Group, received 330 responses from PM, PMM and Strategic Planning personnel around the world.

The results were interesting. Nearly two-thirds of the organizations surveyed found that their budgets, staff and sales were negatively affected by the economy. Hardware manufacturers and reseller/integrators were impacted harder than software/SaaS companies, probably because of the inventory requirements for hardware companies.

Highlights from the survey suggest the following:

• People are having to do more with less and need tools that enhance productivity.
• Two thirds of the companies confirmed that their customers are asking for cost-effective products without extraneous features that are easy-to-use and enhance productivity.
• The respondents reported that managing their own emotional reaction to these events was very important.

The biggest topic was how to do more with less. Management and employees are feeling the pressure and penny pinching as they are working harder and managing more information with fewer resources.

To learn more about the survey findings, you can listen to my presentation here: 

11 min 43 sec