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:
Retention period
Recovery time objectives
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 FrankhouseatUniversity of Detroit Mercy, for an overview of his typical retention periods, knowing that these definitely vary from institution to institution.
Student Activities – 90 days
Student email – 90 days
Course content – 3 years
Catalogs – 10 years plus
Grades – Decades
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. Read the rest of this entry »
In this Experts & Insights podcast, Matt Law, senior PMM at BakBone, talks to Storage Expert Ray Lucchesi of Silverton Consulting about recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). Ray discusses how the criticality of business activities associated with an application and its data determines RPO and RTO requirements.
It’s not enough to simply lay out a plan on paper for meeting recovery time and recovery point objectives. To minimize downtime and data loss in a real-world situation, it’s crucial to plan before disaster strikes. As our experts discuss, this planning includes classifying your data and applications, setting internal expectations for RTOs and RPOs, and testing your plan.
Featured experts include Stephen Wynkoop, Microsoft SQL Server MVP; Robby Wright, Chief Technical Consultant from Abtech; Dennis Martin, President of Demartek; and Mark LeBlanc, Network Specialist at the Edmonton Public Library.
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.
We all know that downtime is a huge issue for everyone, especially as it affects email, databases and file servers. In this Experts & Insights video, we take a close-up look at the data protection challenges and solutions surrounding downtime. Featured experts include Stephen Wynkoop, Microsoft SQL Server MVP; Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst with The Taneja Group; Robby Wright, Chief Technical Consultant from Abtech; Dennis Martin, President of Demartek; and Mark LeBlanc, Network Specialist at the Edmonton Public Library.
