14.2. Data Protection

Data protection is important for all systems. Good data protection practices can help your business deal with scenarios ranging from restoring a file that was accidentally deleted by a user, to recovering from catastrophic events such as datacenter fires and floods. When your systems and storage are operating smoothly, the importance of having effective data protection strategies in place may not always be apparent to your users or your business. But when things go wrong, and data can't be accessed or is destroyed, a deliberate and effective data protection response is essential. You will rely heavily on the tools and policies that were put in place before an event that destroys or corrupts your data. And you'll be glad those tools and policies were there.

The range of data protection options available today is vast. The minimum, yet timeless, standard of data protection is backing up systems and storage devices to virtual or physical tape with some level of frequency. The virtual or physical tapes are then securely sent or transmitted off-site to another datacenter or vaulting facility to make sure your data is safe should something bad happen to your primary location. This level of protection is much better than not having any copies of your data outside of your primary location but will probably not be sufficient to address the data availability requirements of many applications today. The amount of time it would take to retrieve and then restore the data, coupled with the data being only as recent as the last backup, will result in greatly extended RTOs and RPOs.