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By Walter Scott
Working with Live Data
Most migration tools do an excellent job of moving data that is at rest — data that is not currently being used. In fact, much of the time you will be dealing with data that is off-line. However, when you are backing up a server that must be up 24x7 or restoring a transactional server, you’re dealing with live data.
In such cases, you’ll want to be able to image the live data when making the backup so that the backup operation will not impact the server or your users. Select a disk imaging application that can take a snapshot of the server and then perform the backup operation in the background.
You only have two choices with imaging products: those that forces you to take a server down to back up, which can cause massive interruptions to your business processes and productivity, or those that allow you to back up live data completely in the background on a live, running Windows system with open system files. Only programs that can image open Windows files will allow you to save the state of that machine; when you restore that image, the system will be back working in a known, good condition.
Here’s an important caution: If your program does not back up open Windows files, you will not be able to restore the image to a bare-metal drive effectively. You will first have to reinstall the operating system, then all applications, drivers and such. Your backup will be file-based only.
Disaster Recovery
Disasters come in all sizes. Companies need to plan for the recovery of systems first by prioritizing resources and creating backup schedules to match the maximum allowable downtime for any given server. Remember that creating a system backup is not the end of the task, it’s the beginning. Ensuring that the backup can be restored is goal that must be achieved but remember, to be useful, that backup must be able to be restored to any hardware platform, not just the system from which it was created.
Disk imaging offers the best choice for disaster recovery because it can return a system to a known, good working state. However, as noted earlier, make sure that you select an imaging product that can work entirely in the background or you will find yourself with potentially damaging productivity issues.
File-based backups require that you reinstall the operating system, applications, drivers and such, then reconfigure the system to meet you needs.
There are a number of quality disk imaging products available today. You can test each one by creating a live image from one system and restoring it to another hardware platform. (To make things comparable, be sure to use x86 platforms running a version of Windows.) It does not matter if the systems are Intel- or AMD-based; in fact, going from one architecture to the other is a good way to test the software. If you cannot restore an image from one hardware platform to another, chances are you don’t want that product; it likely will cause more grief than it’s worth.
If an SMB's data protection solution does not address the complete lifecycle management of data, the company risks unacceptable exposure of its data that can easily result in the loss of data and costly downtime. Policies, procedures and having the right tools to do the job sometimes just aren’t enough. SMBs, just like their corporate competitors, need to test their disaster recovery plan to ensure that they know how to recover. Having the right IT products is just the first step; practice and experience round out a fully functional disaster recovery plan.
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