Backup to the Cloud NetApp

These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.


by Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP

Backup to the Cloud

NetApp Special Edition


Backup to the Cloud For Dummies®, NetApp Special Edition

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030‐5774 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Introduction

T raditional data backup technologies, such as tape, are slow, expensive, and risky. Lost or damaged

tapes, long restore times, and painfully slow manage-ment are driving organizations to look for a better data protection solution.

About This BookThis book provides an overview of cloud‐integrated data protection, which addresses many of today’s backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and archive challenges by transforming the cloud into a low‐cost, instantly accessible data storage tier.

Foolish AssumptionsIt’s been said that most assumptions have outlived their usefulness, but I’ll assume a few things nonetheless!

I assume you have at least a basic understanding of data‐protection concepts — specifically, backup and recovery — and cloud technologies.

I also assume that you’re a technical decision maker, such as a chief information officer (CIO), VP, or direc-tor of infrastructure. Or perhaps you’re a storage/backup manager or administrator or a cloud or enter-prise architect for a midsize business or a large enterprise.


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Finally, I assume that you’re evaluating backup solu-tions for your organization.

Icons Used in This BookThroughout this book, I occasionally use special icons to call attention to important information. Here’s what to expect.

This icon points out information that may well be worth committing to your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin!

You won’t find a map of the human genome, but if you seek to attain the seventh level of NERD‐vana, perk up! This icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy the book, and please take care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful sugges-tions and useful nuggets of information.

Beyond the BookAlthough this book is chock-full of information, there’s only so much I can cover in 32 short pages! So, after reading this book, if you find yourself wanting to know more, simply go to www.netapp.com/AltaVault!

http://www.netapp.com/AltaVault


Moving to a New Backup Strategy

In This Chapter ▶ Understanding backup challenges ▶ Integrating backup technologies with the cloud ▶ Realizing the benefits of backup to the cloud

I n this chapter, I discuss the challenges and limitations of traditional backup strategies, explain how to

integrate your existing backup infrastructure with the cloud, and go over the benefits of backup to the cloud.

Recognizing the NeedImproving data protection is a priority for organizations of all sizes. A recent survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that the top three priorities for respondents were

✓ Information security initiatives (34 percent)

✓ Improving data backup and recovery (26 percent)

✓ Managing data growth (26 percent)

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Clearly, these three priorities are closely related, and storage technologies play a central role in any associated strategic initiatives.

Over the past decade, data theft has become the primary objective of cybercriminals seeking to exploit sensitive financial or personal data. Robust storage platforms that protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical data are a must for every organization.

Disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) — and therefore data backup and recovery — are basic building blocks of an information security strategy. But traditional backup and recovery can’t keep up with the requirements of organizations today. Traditional backup and recovery strategies have the following problems:

✓ Too slow: Users expect instant recovery and minimal data loss, but legacy backup and recovery technologies can’t keep pace. As a result, many organizations fail to meet backup and recovery windows as data footprints grow, while bandwidth and throughput stay the same.

✓ Too expensive: As data storage needs grow, companies struggle with the rising cost of protecting that data. Research by IDC shows that the emergence of wireless technologies, smart products, and other factors contribute to worldwide data growth, with volume expected to multiply tenfold between 2013 and 2020. Meanwhile, storage and backup budgets remain flat and bandwidth costs and constraints become more acute with larger datasets.


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✓ Too risky: Legacy technologies increase risk exposure. Many organizations still rely on tape, in creasing risk due to lost or damaged tape media during use, handling, and transport. Tape can also lead to increased downtime and data loss, and reduced ability to test DR procedures.

Managing data growth requires strategies that use innovative data storage technologies including compression, deduplication, encryption, and replication.

A terabyte is equal to 1024 gigabytes, a petabyte is equal to 1024 terabytes, an exabyte is equal to 1024 petabytes (or roughly a billion gigabytes)!

Cloud‐Integrated Data ProtectionFor IT organizations struggling with data backup and recovery, the sheer number of available data protection strategies and technologies can be overwhelming. Disk, tape, backup‐as‐a‐service (BaaS), and backup to the cloud are all viable technologies for data protection. For most organizations, a hybrid architecture makes the most sense.

Start with diskFor many years now, disk has been the primary target for initial backups of production data, as well as the primary source for data recovery in an ever‐growing number of organizations. Backups from primary storage to an onsite disk‐based target, and recovery from disk‐based backup to primary storage, can be accomplished very quickly over a backup network and


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provide many benefits over direct‐to‐tape strategies, including

✓ Minimizing backup windows by taking advantage of faster disk‐based technology

✓ Supporting stringent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and service level agreements (SLAs) using faster disk‐based technology, and stringent recovery point objectives (RPOs) using snapshots and transaction logs, for example, to enable more frequent backups

✓ Supporting data deduplication to help control data growth and improve efficiency

✓ Enabling faster data restores with random access to data (compared to sequential access in tape‐based systems)

✓ Lessening wear and tear on tape‐based systems (when used in disk‐to‐tape, or D2T) by reducing thrashing between production systems feeding data to backup media servers and tape libraries

Your first backup copy should always go to onsite disk for rapid recovery, regardless of whether you then send your backup copy to tape, to the cloud, or to another (offsite) disk. The triedandtrue strategy of 3‐2‐1 — at least three copies of data in two different formats with one of those copies going offsite — is still widely used with disk‐to‐disk‐to‐cloud backup strategies.

The tale of the tapeDespite the fact that cloud storage is easily and securely accessible, eliminating tape entirely from your


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data protection strategy isn’t necessarily practical. For example, organizations that have long‐term data retention requirements spanning many years — even decades — found their only viable option was archiving to tape. Today, many organizations still struggle with legacy implementations in spite of well‐documented problems with tape storage systems, including the following:

✓ Failed backups: Tape systems are susceptible to drive failures, media failures, and missed backups due to a combination of data growth and shrinking backup windows.

✓ Lengthy restore times: It can take days or weeks to restore data from tapes stored at an offsite location.

✓ Data security: Tapes can be lost or stolen when transported offsite for storage. The loss of unencrypted tapes can trigger requirements for public disclosure and result in substantial penalties.

✓ Data loss: Mislabeled tapes, lost tapes, and media failures can all result in the loss of critical data.

✓ High management costs: The time required to manage physical tapes, resolve failed backups, and manage restore operations increases as the amount of backup data increases.

Understanding Backup‐as‐a‐ServiceBackup‐as‐a‐Service (BaaS) can be a viable data protection option for smaller organizations that aren’t subject to stringent regulatory requirements, or for backing up enduser devices in a bringyourowndevice (BYOD) environment.


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Contrary to what you may have heard, many BaaS offerings are designed and marketed as consumer‐ oriented products rather than enterprise solutions, and therefore may have the following drawbacks:

✓ Not optimized to handle large volumes of data

✓ Insufficient security safeguards to meet regulatory requirements

✓ Inadequate governance and custodianship of data

✓ Don’t ensure minimally acceptable SLAs in the event of a disaster

Although BaaS can be a useful component in your backup strategy, committing your entire data protection strategy to BaaS can have major pitfalls, including the following:

✓ Vendor lock‐in: Your BaaS provider may store your data in a proprietary format, making it difficult to switch providers later.

✓ Migration costs: Moving to BaaS requires replacing the backup agents on all of your systems with your provider’s agents. You’ll also have to re‐create backup job schedules and retrain IT staff. If you move to a different BaaS provider later, you’ll have to rinse and repeat.

Going to the cloudBackup to the cloud is a rapidly emerging data protection strategy. Backup to the cloud, which leverages on‐premises backup infrastructure that integrates with a cloud‐based backup target, is distinctly different from BaaS (discussed in the previous section) and


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disk‐to‐cloud (D2C) solutions that send a copy of data directly from a production server to the cloud.

A typical backuptothecloud architecture uses on‐premises backup components (including backup software, media servers, server agents, and backup disk targets) to provide the first tier of backup and recovery capability, and replicates backup data to the cloud in order to provide the second tier of backup and recovery capability for offsite disaster recovery and archiving.

Examining the BenefitsBackup to the cloud, utilizing a disk‐to‐disk‐to‐cloud (D2D2C) architecture, can provide numerous benefits for organizations, including the following:

✓ Rapid file restores: Routine file restore requests (due to accidental modification or deletion of a file) from end users can be completed quickly from the on‐premises backup disk.

✓ Leverage existing backup infrastructure: Backup to the cloud solutions, such as NetApp AltaVault (formerly SteelStore) cloud‐integrated storage, work with many of today’s existing storage and backup vendor solutions and enable you to integrate these solutions with the cloud.

✓ Near‐instantaneous off-site vaulting: Rather than waiting for a backup window to complete, and then transporting tapes to an offsite facility, D2D2C allows you to begin streaming backup data to the cloud while individual backup jobs are running.


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✓ Low cost backup storage: The cost for cloud storage has dropped to an average of less than 2 cents per gigabyte per month, making backup to the cloud a very costeffective solution and enabling organizations to forgo capital investments in expensive backup storage.

✓ Enhanced security: Security was once the primary concern of organizations considering a cloud strategy. Today, many cloud service providers have better security safeguards in place than some of the organizations that they serve!


Choosing an Appliance

In This Chapter ▶ Backing up to the cloud ▶ Getting physical with backups ▶ Going virtual ▶ Understanding cloud‐based appliances

I n this chapter, you learn about NetApp AltaVault physical, virtual, and cloud‐based solutions.

Learning How AltaVault Appliances Work with the CloudNetApp AltaVault cloud‐integrated storage enables organizations to securely back up data to practically any cloud, usually at a lower cost compared to that of on‐premises solutions. AltaVault gives organizations the power to tap into cloud economics while preserv-ing investments in existing backup infrastructure and meeting backup and recovery service‐level agreements (SLAs).

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Checking Out AltaVault Physical AppliancesNetApp AltaVault physical appliances are cloud‐ integrated storage appliances with capacities ranging from 32 to 384 terabytes of usable local cache. AltaVault physical appliances are often deployed in the data center to protect large volumes of data. These datasets typically require high levels of performance and scalability. AltaVault physical appliances are built on a scalable hardware platform intended to reduce data footprints and rapidly stream data to the cloud.

AltaVault physical appliances include the AVA400 and the AVA800. Both models support RAID 6 and include the following:

✓ Four 1 Gigabit Ethernet network connections

✓ Four 10 Gigabit Ethernet network connections

RAID 6 uses block‐level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks.

Looking at AltaVault Virtual AppliancesAltaVault Virtual Appliances for Microsoft Hyper‐V and VMware ESX are good solutions for medium‐sized busi-nesses getting started with cloud backup. They also work well for enterprises that need to protect branch and remote offices with the same level of protection they require in the data center.

AltaVault virtual appliances offer the flexibility of deploy-ment onto heterogeneous hardware, while still providing the features and functionality of hardware‐based


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appliances (discussed in the previous section). AltaVault virtual appliances can be deployed onto VMware or Hyper‐V hypervisors, giving you flexibility to choose the hardware that works best for your organization.

AltaVault virtual appliances include the AVA‐v8, AVA‐v16, and AVA‐v32. All models support VMware and Hyper‐V hypervisors, and customer‐provisioned RAID protection levels.

Understanding AltaVault Cloud‐Based AppliancesFor organizations that need additional off-site protec-tion, cloud‐based NetApp AltaVault appliances on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure offer low‐cost, cloud‐based data recovery. Data is backed up at the primary site using on‐premises AltaVault physical or virtual appliances. If the primary site becomes unavailable for any reason, you can quickly recover your data directly from a cloud‐based AltaVault appliance.

If you have production workloads running in the public cloud, cloud‐based AltaVault appliances offer an effi-cient and secure option for backing up these work-loads. Using your existing backup software, AltaVault cloud‐based appliances deduplicate, encrypt, and rap-idly back up cloud applications directly to long‐term, low‐cost cloud storage.

In both cases, usage‐based pay‐as‐you‐go pricing allows you to only pay for what you use.

Data is deduplicated, compressed, and encrypted onto the AltaVault physical or virtual appliance, which caches recent backups locally and vaults older backup copies to the cloud (see Figure 2-1).


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Organizations that use NetApp FAS storage systems can perform disk‐to‐disk (D2D) replication using SnapVault and/or SnapMirror. In addition to the rapid backup/restore capabilities of a typical D2D solution, SnapVault and SnapMirror maintain storage efficiency of on‐array NetApp Snapshot copies across the net-work and on the target system. The replicated data is stored in native format, which enables the data to be used for disaster recovery, development/test environ-ments, reporting, and analytics, leveraging NetApp

Figure 2-1: NetApp AltaVault provides seamless integration with existing applications and cloud service providers. Source: NetApp


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FlexClone technology to create space‐efficient copies of the data. AltaVault can be used in the cloud for long‐term backup vaulting or to replace an existing tape tier, for instance going from disk‐to‐disk‐to‐tape (D2D2T) to disk‐to‐disk‐to‐cloud (D2D2C).

Leading cloud provider solutions that integrate seamlessly with NetApp AltaVault physical and virtual appliances include

✓ Public cloud

• Amazon (Glacier and S3)

• AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service

• CenturyLink

• Dunkel Cloud Storage

• EVault LTS2

• Google Cloud Platform

• IBM SoftLayer Object Storage

• Microsoft Azure

• Rackspace

• Swisscom

• Telefonica

• TELUS

• Verizon Terremark

✓ Private cloud

• NetApp StorageGRID Webscale

• Cleversafe

• Cloudian HyperStore

• EMC Atmos

• OpenStack Swift


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Financial services firm implements AltaVault to optimize backup process

A technology‐focused proprietary trading firm built on applied technology is using the latest in innovation to solve problems in the financial markets. The firm deployed Amazon Glacier and NetApp AltaVault to leverage key technologies including backup, cloud storage, encryption, and deduplication.

Challenges

✓ Data storage process involved managing and storing tapes, which was time-consuming

✓ Wanted to better utilize the talents of the IT team

Results

✓ 40 hours a month were reclaimed by the IT team to focus on new strategies and systems

✓ Annual archival storage cost reduced by 96 percent

✓ Two‐year return on investment (ROI) for AltaVault appli-ance, including cloud storage costs and $500,000 poten-tial cost avoidance by eliminating a costly storage area network (SAN) upgrade

✓ 85 percent dataset reduction with deduplication

✓ Restores in minutes (from AltaVault cache) or four to five hours (from Glacier), versus two to three days with tape

For more details go to www.netapp.com/spottrading.

http://www.netapp.com/spottrading

http://www.netapp.com/spottrading


The Four Pillars of AltaVault

In This Chapter ▶ Performing backups efficiently ▶ Using an open architecture to maximize flexibility and choice

▶ Keeping backup data secure ▶ Simplifying your backup strategy

I n this chapter, you learn about the four pillars that form the foundation of the NetApp AltaVault cloud‐

integrated backup solution. As a reminder, AltaVault enterprise‐class cloud‐integrated storage can help you deal with data management issues by reducing time, cost, and data volumes. The AltaVault cloud‐integrated storage appliance deduplicates, compresses, encrypts, and streams data to the private or public cloud.

EfficientEfficiency is the first AltaVault pillar. AltaVault uses inline deduplication and compression, resulting in sig-nificant data reduction ratios — this means you store less data in the cloud and can get it there faster.

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Over three years, AltaVault with a public cloud backend can save you money compared to competitor disk‐based appliances and tape.

Other efficiency features and benefits of AltaVault include the following:

✓ Network and cloud optimization

• Built‐in WAN optimization and deduplication reduce the amount of data transported to the cloud and speed transfer times.

• AltaVault intelligently throttles data, which can save you time (and money).

• Quality of Service (QoS) ensures that data is correctly prioritized to move to and from the cloud at the speed your business requires.

✓ Restore data faster

• Shrink backup windows with faster ingest performance.

• AltaVault improves recoverability with file restores occurring from local cache.

• Intelligent prefetching enables AltaVault to restore data from the cloud within minutes.

• Organizations can restore data much more quickly with AltaVault compared to tape.

OpenThe second pillar of the NetApp AltaVault solution is an open architecture that enables seamless integration of the cloud into enterprise backup strategies.


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Although open is often used in the world of technology to refer to open sources software, NetApp uses it to refer to open integration into other platforms.

Advantages of the AltaVault open architecture include the following:

✓ Flexible deployment and scale

• Choose the offering that is right for your orga-nization: physical, virtual, or cloud‐based appliances.

• AltaVault appliances start from 8 terabytes and scale up to 57 petabytes of protected data in the cloud.

✓ Compatible with your existing backup software

• Love your backup software? So does AltaVault! AltaVault is compatible with the majority of leading backup and archiving software solu-tions, including EMC, Veritas, IBM, and CommVault.

• Don’t waste time and effort ripping and replac-ing your backup software and retraining IT staff.

✓ Offers cloud choice and agility

• Pick a cloud, any cloud, and AltaVault likely supports it. AltaVault supports most of the leading cloud providers and platforms on the market today.

• Keep your data mobile with AltaVault cloud agility, which allows you to migrate your data from one cloud provider to another, as necessary.


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SecureAltaVault keeps your backup data secure with security features that enable you to do the following:

✓ Encrypt data in‐flight and at rest

• Ensure that data at rest is safe using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 256‐bit encryp-tion, compliant with FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) 140‐2 Level 1.

• Protect data in‐flight with industry‐standard SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption with keys managed locally by your IT security department.

✓ Control your data

• Restrict access to backup data on AltaVault to authorized personnel using role‐based access controls and integration with TACACS (termi-nal access controller access control system) and RADIUS (remote authentication dial‐in user service).

• Use the management ACL (access control list) to secure the appliance by exposing only the nec-essary protocols, ports, and networks needed.

✓ Minimize recovery time and data loss

• Reduce RTO and meet SLAs by restoring files from locally cached backups on the AltaVault appliance.

• Improve RPO by immediately replicating data off-site so that recovery points are as recent as your latest backup, rather than the last time tapes were shipped off-site.


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✓ Improve disaster recovery

• Recover on‐premises workloads in the cloud during DR tests or declarations with AltaVault cloud‐based appliances in AWS and Azure.

AltaVault is already protecting more than 150 petabytes of customer data in the cloud today.

SimpleAltaVault offers simplicity in design and operation to help streamline deployment and management of your backup architecture. The simplicity of AltaVault enables organizations to do the following:

✓ Deploy faster

• Get up and running with AltaVault in less than 30 minutes. In three simple steps, you can start sending data to the cloud.

• Accelerate your cloud storage onramp with rapid deployment and faster data transfers.

✓ Manage smarter

• Reduce tape management overhead and manual tasks that are error prone and time consuming.

• Perform remote monitoring and management from a GUI‐driven management dashboard.

• Allocate valuable employee resources to other projects.


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Working Well with Others

In This Chapter ▶ Leveraging your backup software with the cloud ▶ Replicating to a public cloud ▶ Building a private cloud backup solution

I n this chapter, you learn more about how AltaVault works with leading backup software and both public

and private cloud providers.

Backup SoftwareNetApp AltaVault appliances are purpose‐built for backup and archive applications. Through integration with many of the leading backup, database, and virtual backup solutions, AltaVault offers a lot of flexibility for organizations that want to leverage their existing backup software in a cloud‐integrated backup strategy.

AltaVault looks to provide optimal data transfers based on the unique methodologies of the backup application. For example, Commvault Simpana inserts tape markers into its backup streams. This can impact data deduplication performance if not handled correctly by

Chapter 4


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the deduplication engine. Similarly, Veeam Backup and Replication uses specific data read routines when performing vPower based virtual machine (VM) recovery operations.

In addition to integration with backup applications, AltaVault appliances are also certified with supported backup applications. AltaVault appliances are certified for IBM Spectrum Protect, as well as Veeam Backup and Replication. These certifications are living partnerships with these vendors, guaranteeing that the highest level of integration and testing has been done to qualify the cross compatibility of the two products together within critical business environments.

Public CloudReliably offloading backup data to a public cloud is critical to any cloud storage gateway’s success. AltaVault appliances optimize data transfer to public clouds, while providing users with options to throttle bandwidth use, and scheduling when transfers can run.

AltaVault data transfer is done using cloud provider APIs (application programming interfaces), which are typically HTTP/REST (hypertext transfer protocol/ representational state transfer) based protocols. These protocols are designed for multisession ingests of small data segments. The data segments are then stored collectively in a single target location (commonly referred to as a cloud bucket).

AltaVault networking parameters have been carefully tuned to optimize throughput with each supported


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cloud provider. AltaVault allocates multiple threads to transmit data to and from the cloud provider, based on networking performance, the data in the queue, and the cloud provider selected.

Transactions are batched together for maximum throughput and efficiency of the threads. Objects sent to the public cloud provider are typically anywhere from several kilobytes up to a few megabytes in size. In the event of a problem with a data object, transfers will automatically pause and alert the user that the appliance was unable to maintain connectivity to the cloud storage bucket.

Data transfers are automatic and provide an estimated time of completion when running, so that users can better understand the time frame required to perform cloud data updates. This can be important if there are restrictions placed on bandwidth or if scheduling windows are in use. Establishing a completion date and time lets users know clearly when data is in sync with cloud storage and protected in the event of a disaster.

AltaVault seamlessly integrates with many of today’s public cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, among others.

Private CloudFor organizations that don’t use the public cloud (either because they can’t or don’t want to), AltaVault integrates with many private cloud object storage solutions, including NetApp StorageGRID Webscale.


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Private or hybrid cloud infrastructures can provide efficiency and security for your data protection strategy.

A combined NetApp StorageGRID Webscale and AltaVault solution is one example of a private cloud infrastructure that enables organizations to efficiently store, manage, and retrieve their data.

NetApp StorageGRID Webscale is a scalable, software‐defined object storage solution for large archives, media repositories, and web datastores. StorageGRID Webscale combines more than ten years of production deployments with intelligent policydriven data management to create an enterprise‐grade, highly scalable object repository built for the hybrid cloud.

You can connect the AltaVault appliance and StorageGRID Webscale over a WAN or LAN. Either way, the built‐in network optimization and deduplication of AltaVault significantly reduce the amount of data transported and can speed up transfer rates.

The StorageGRID Webscale policy engine provides automated data placement across storage tiers, physical sites, and hybrid clouds, according to your site‐based performance and availability requirements, and is optimized for cost as your data ages. Real‐time auditing provides continuous and active monitoring for SLA verification and reporting. Finally, the StorageGRID Webscale data durability framework ensures data integrity and accessibility.


Nine Ways to Get Started with Backup to the Cloud

In This Chapter ▶ Nine things to consider for your backup strategy

H ere are nine things you need to look at when planning your backup to the cloud strategy.

Review Your Service‐Level Agreements (SLAs)SLAs are subject to change periodically. Ensure that your SLAs are current and that your backup strategy is designed to meet increasingly stringent SLA requirements.

Understand Your Data Retention RequirementsEvery organization has unique data retention require-ments, and those requirements sometimes change.

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Ensure that your retention requirements are current, relevant, comprehensive, and understood.

You should retain data backups on-site long enough to cover approximately 85 percent of your typical file restore requests. Your off-site retention requirements will be driven by your company’s data retention policies and legal requirements.

Update Your Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) PlansDR and BC plans must be continuously updated to ensure that they’re relevant and effective. Start with your most current DR and BC plans to help you identify any areas that your current backup infrastructure can’t adequately address.

Verify Regulatory RequirementsBe familiar with any applicable regulatory require-ments for your organization’s data and ensure that your backup strategy adequately addresses those requirements.

Know Your Legal Requirements for Data LocationSome data may have legal requirements for where it can physically be stored with respect to geographical


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location. This is particularly important when considering a backup-to-the-cloud strategy. Ensure that you know the legal requirements for your organi-zation’s data.

Define Your Business and Technical RequirementsMeet with business stakeholders, data owners (or custodians), and other key personnel throughout your organization to formally define the business require-ments for your data protection strategy, as well as technical requirements including performance, scalability, and security.

Assess Your Existing Backup StrategyPerform a gap analysis to determine any shortcomings that need to be addressed between your existing backup strategy/infrastructure and your business/ technical requirements.

Identify Reusable Backup ComponentsIdentify any components in your existing backup infrastructure that you might leverage in your new backup strategy such as backup software, media servers, storage devices, and cloud service providers.


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Remember Not All Data Is the SameDifferent applications have different needs for reten-tion and backup. Many organizations tend to back up and retain all data the same way.

As you start your backup to the cloud initia-tive, take the opportunity to review your SLA and retention requirements, and classify your data appropriately.



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Backup to the Cloud NetApp