Find the Best Backup for Your Business

by Luis Gomes

The CEBI Foundation is a non-profit focused on providingservices to our community. We don’t have piles of cash for the latest andgreatest technology, and our technical skillset is constantly under pressure toadapt and keep current. Layer on top the tremendous data growth we’re seeingand a strategic but gradual shift to virtualization and it’s plain to see we’vegot a full plate. Backup is at the top of our worries list. Our data isgrowing, our environment is changing over time and complexity is increasing. Weneeded to find a backup solution that would function better in a more complexenvironment without forcing new skills training or upgrading the talent wealready have. Our current solution was already far too complicated and slow touse even without the additional complexity of the virtualized environment. Threeareas became key for our decision.

Installation
The first test was the installation itself. Did we need tobuy services from the vendor, send folks to school, or bring in an army ofconsultants? It’s important that the implementation be done quickly to minimizedisruption to operations. And we didn’t want to be on the bleeding edge,introducing new risk on top of our existing changes. Since our migration isgradual, we needed a single platform that could handle these infrastructurechanges over time without breaking down under the stress or starting outover-subscribed.

User Interface
That meant usability was critical. Our staff is focused onserving the community and our IT staff is minimal. Backup and recovery tasks hadto be comprehensive but simple. If the interface is intuitive enough that non-technicalusers can use the solution, it will free up professional IT staff to pursueother initiatives and save on overhead.

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Eight Secrets Most Backup Vendors Don't Want you to Know

by Dr. Mark Campbell

Every industry has its secrets, and the backup market is no different.While widely known within the industry itself, many backup providers do a greatjob of keeping these secrets from current and prospective customers.

But today’s increasingly agile, complex and heterogeneous data centershave made data protection a challenge for many companies, and the last thingthey need is to be kept in the dark on the industry’s intricacies. With this inmind, I want to shed some light on eight secrets most backup vendors don’t wantyou to know.

The cost of backup software is afraction of what you’re going to spend.
The cost of your backup software is only the tip of the iceberg in termsof your capital and operating costs. You’re also going to need to purchase aserver, an operating system, a storage controller, a lot of storage and somepretty advanced networking – and then spend time and money figuring out how tointegrate these components to optimize functionality and performance.

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