What Is Flat Backup and How Can It Benefit Your Data?

Backup and Recovery, data recovery, flat backup, ,
21
Dec 2017

There’s a new kid in town when it comes to data storage and it’s called flat backup, but it’s so new that not many people are aware of its benefits.

We’re all used to local backups and the popularity of cloud backups has skyrocketed over the last couple of years, but the data storage industry is now so huge that it’s constantly looking to improve and raise the bar. No form of backup, of course, will ever be perfect but the developers behind flat backup believe that they can eradicate some of the common problems associated with the current backup methods.

To help you understand exactly what flat backup is and what it can do for your organization, I’m going to shine the spotlight on this exciting development.

The Concept Behind Flat Backup

The backbone of flat backups is provided by snapshots of your data which copy the entire status of your data at any given moment. This sounds fine in principle, but how does this differ from any other form of backup? Well, with local and cloud backups, if you want to create a new backup you have to go through the process of creating a whole new backup, but a flat backup simply updates the existing backup. Changes to the data and any deletions are quickly flagged in the snapshot, so there’s no need to create a series of duplicate backups to highlight any changes.

These snapshots can then be stored and, if required, simply mounted to the application which requires data to be restored. There are no format changes required, simply a seamless transition of data. Flat backups, however, come with many more benefits which could encourage significant changes to your organization’s backup practices.

Flat Backup Benefits

The new approach of flat backups can deliver the following benefits:

  • Reduced Storage Space– The need for only one snapshot per application not only simplifies matters, but it will also lead to a dramatic reduction in storage space required for your organization. And, with this reduction in digital real estate needed, you’ll find that you start making savings as storage media can be downgraded.
  • Quicker Restores– One of the major problems with traditional backups is that restoring the data can be a time consuming affair. With flat backups, however, the recovery process can be implemented almost instantly which ensures your organization can get back to its normal operations as quickly as possible following a data disaster.
  • No Impact on Application Performance – Snapshots don’t affect application performance as dramatically as traditional backup methods, so this opens up the possibility of carrying out more flat backups throughout the day (every minute if required). This approach allows your business to archive more and more incremental changes to your data and improve the amount of data that can be recovered.

Final Thoughts

Flat backup is still in its infancy – even more so than the recent phenomenon of cloud backups – but it represents an intriguing evolution of backup methods. As with all backup methods, though, flat backup doesn’t avoid the need for multiple storage locations – if your flat backup snapshots are only stored in one location then they are at risk of being completely lost. Nonetheless, flat backups are something to consider for the future.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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The Essential Local Backup Checklist

Backup and Recovery, data recovery, Local Backups, ,
05
Dec 2017

localbackup

Local backups are fantastic for ensuring backed up data is kept close to hand, but to make sure the most crucial data is there you need a good checklist.

You see, as with all backups, preparation is essential to ensure your local backup can help keep your organization functioning in the case of a data emergency. A good checklist avoids any disasters by making sure the right data is available and ready, but with so much data where do you start?

Well, let’s get started by showing you the essential points you need on your checklist.

Checklist

  • Up to Date? Whilst it’s important to have data available which goes back months (or even years in some cases), it’s just as vital that current documents are also backed up. Therefore, pick a document at random from your ‘Recent Documents’ history and verify that this document is available in your local backup – the last thing you want in the case of a data disaster is to have all of your most pressing work missing. 
  • How Many Versions? One version of a backed up document is great, but what’s even better is to have multiple versions of the same document backed up. Changes can be made to documents used over a long period of time and it’s always useful to keep the changes recorded in case of future queries. Keeping an archive of your local backups is important as it allows you to verify any changes that have been made when, in the case of data loss, this may be incredibly difficult to trace. 
  • Is Your Data Easily Accessible? A local backup provides quick access to your data when you need it most, but this is only of use if you know you have the facility to access it. For example, if your entire network goes down, do you know that you can access it with technology not connected to your network? It’s easy for data to be protected and not work on every backup laptop/PC so make sure you regularly check your backup technology to check it can read your optical drives and run any flash drives you use for storing data. 
  • Does the Recovery Process Work? As well as regularly checking that your backup hardware works, you also want to make sure that the recovery process works. Factor in a weekly check of your recovery process to confirm that folders can be rebuilt and files accessed with no problems. Eliminating any issues that could possibly occur when restoring your data will reduce the downtime your organization faces. 
  • Have You Automated What You Can? The nature of a local backup means that you can’t necessarily automate all aspects of your backup e.g. backing up data to a DVD requires plenty of human interaction. However, not only can you set yourself plenty of automatic reminders on your computer, you can also automate backups to external hard drives which are connected to your network. 

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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4 Tips for Business Data Storage

Office IT,
31
May 2016

data-storage-solution All businesses rely on data storage, so it’s an important area for your business to focus on. However, many businesses fail to make it a priority.

Underestimating your data storage needs can lead to major, major issues when things go wrong. Things tend to always go wrong at the worst possible moment. That’s why it’s critical to make data storage an on-going priority.

To help you understand how to build a reliable and forward thinking data storage plan, we will share some tips to help get you started.

Determine Your Storage Needs

Your storage needs will be reliant not only on how much data you’re processing, but also the type of data. And, of course, how will you be accessing this data?

There are a wide variety of options available such as:

  • USB Sticks
  • External hard drives
  • Central data storage
  • Cloud based storage

All of these provide a unique service which may or may not fit in with your specific needs, so the best advice here is to speak with your IT support. They’ll be able to tailor data storage to fit your needs.

Buy More Than You Need

Businesses always miscalculate the amount of data they’re handling and processing. It’s no surprise really as things can rapidly build in the business world. And, sure, it may seem as though your brand new data storage solution seems enough.

But what if you get a little bit busier? That amazing data storage system may start to creak under the weight of all this additional work.

To avoid disruption to your business, it’s a good idea to overcompensate for your data storage needs. This allows your hardware to not only handle the data with ease, but also allows for rapid expansion when necessary.

Consider Network Attached Storage

synology-ds212j-2-bay-nas-drive-enclosure

Many small businesses are now turning to Network Attached Storage (NAS) for their data storage needs, but what is NAS?

Well, a NAS device is a piece of storage hardware which permits users on a network to store and retrieve data from a central location. The beauty in an NAS device is that they’re incredibly simple to use and don’t require an IT team to monitor.

Essentially, NAS is the same as cloud storage, but it’s physically based in your office. Depending on the device you purchase, around 25 – 50 employees can all access data from a central point. This is vital in a small business where everyone needs to be on the same page.  You also have the option of adding additional storage as you go seamlessly.

Regularly Test Your Data Storage

It’s very easy to put a data storage system in place and then assume that it’s going to work fine for years to come. On the whole, it should work pretty well. However, your business environment may suddenly change and this can affect the power of your data storage.

To prevent falling into this pothole, you’ll want to test the performance of your data storage a few times a year. If you find that things are slowing down when it comes to accessing and storing data it’s going to need investigation.  Most modern NAS systems have health monitoring built in making this task simple and straight forward.

This may be caused by a simple software issue or it may be a signal that an upgrade in hardware is required for the additional workload. Either way, you’ll be in a position to implement the necessary changes.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

 

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Samsung Deliver a Huge 16TB Solid State Drive

hardware,
12
Apr 2016

Samsung-PM1633A

You can never have enough storage on your PCs, so that’s why Samsung has now released a 16TB solid state drive (SSD) which is being called the biggest ever.

Samsung has decided that it’s time to solve all your storage issues with an integral SSD rather than investing in finicky cloud storage systems. The SSD – entitled PM1633a – has the business sector in its sights and is an impressive sign of intent by Samsung.

The PM1633a has such high density storage that it’s currently unparalleled in the PC market. It’s an exciting opportunity for businesses to get involved with premium storage, so it’s time you found out a little more.

What is the PM1633a?

SSDs are a relatively new form of storage system which has evolved from the traditional hard disk drive (HDD). The main benefit of SSDs over their HDD counterparts is the all important factor of speed. Whereas a HDD relies of mechanical parts to operate (hence all the whirring sounds), an SSD operates via flash memory, so is much faster and quieter.

Despite this edge in terms of speed, SSDs have traditionally been unable to match the huge amounts of storage real estate that HDDs have been capable of. However, Samsung’s PM1633a potentially signals the beginning of an era of dominance for SSDs by racing past HDDs.

The All Important Specs

ssd_hdd

The largest SSD storage capabilities currently available are around 8 – 10TB in size, but, in order to make a huge statement, Samsung has gone for 16TB with the PM1633a. This is close to double anything else currently available in the SSD market, but how has Samsung managed this?

In order to achieve such high storage, Samsung has really had to re-design the wheel. In the case of the PM1633a, Samsung has integrated their new 256GB V-NAND flash which has been stacked up in 48 layers. For comparison, Samsung’s previous foray into high storage SSDs was comprised of only 36 layers.

These figures are very impressive, but what exactly does it mean in terms of performance?

What Will The PM1633a Do For You?

DSC_1048

Samsung’s new SSD will, rather obviously, provide huge amounts of storage for your business, but its magnificent benefits do not stop there. It will also provide the following:

  • A staggering 2 million input/output operations per second (IOPS). This is in stark contrast to the current average of 90,000 IOPS in SSDs. The higher the IOPS, the quicker you can save and access large files without your system grinding to a halt.
  • There is a high level of data protection on offer with the added bonus of a data restoration tool to protect against temporary blackouts and power issues.
  • The ability to write a total of 15.36TB of data every single day, so this is very attractive to businesses which process large amounts of data.

Is Samsung onto a Winner?

Samsung has predicted that there will be a huge demand for ultra-high storage and, when you take a look at the PM1633a’s specs, it’s difficult to argue against this.

The crucial difference with the PM1633a is not that it’s merely a behemoth of storage, it also promises to enhance your business operations by making PCs more productive. The smart money, therefore, is currently on Samsung to deliver a market leader in SSDs.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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Best Hard Drive to Invest In

hardware, Office IT, ,
27
Mar 2015

hard-drive-pile

Which is the best hard drive to invest in? With many brands to choose from, we’ll disclose our findings from our best source so you can secure your data.

Backblaze, a large data center that offers online backups, has published a new report to advise on the best hard drives to use. Their results are based on the numerous hard disks they use to run their business.

With over 34,000 active hard drives onsite holding 100 petabytes, they have plenty of experience for anyone interested.

Last year we published an article based on the best hard drives for reliability and durability. To recap on our research, the most reliable brand was Hitachi GST 1.5TB and 3 TB capacities and the least were the 3TB Western Digital and Seagate drives.

Note that Backblaze’s observations are based on a limited range of brands which include Western Digital, Hitachi and Seagate drives. They do use Toshiba and Samsung drives, however, their numbers are not quite as many to provide statistical results.

In this article, we’ll drill down to which drive models last the longest and work the best.

Considerations based on this study

Since Backblaze is a growing online backup business, they need cost effective solutions that give the best results, which is why there are more hard disks being used in particular brands than others. That’s not to say that they’ll never try out more expensive hard disks out in their data center.

Another consideration from their study is the exclusion on energy efficient drives, such as the Seagate LP (low power) 2TB drives and Western Digital Green 3TB drives. These two drives are just not suited for running a 24/7 online business as their power saving feature makes the drives spin down aggressively when not in use, causing them to wear down faster. They had also noted plenty of errors with these drives due to the latter.

Seagate drives

seagate-logo-100410502-large

  • With the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda LP drives, it’s been observed that they’ve been consistently good with an average age of nearly 4 years. Their annual failure rate is not the best at 9.9%, but it’s not the worst either.
  • On the other hand, the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 has around the same durability as the LP model but with 25.4% annual fail rate, which worsens as they age.
  • The larger 2TB to 4 TB, like their smaller 1.5 TB versions, are also very reliable but do play up as they age. These include Seagate Barracuda 3TB, Seagate Barracuda 3TB XT and Seagate Barracuda 3TB LP, which all have over 7 % annual failure rate at an average of 1.5 to 2 years.
  • The exception is with the 4TB Seagate Desktop HDD.15, with an average age of 0.3% and a reliable 3.8 % annual fail rate.
  • Seagate drives are consistent in their performance, perhaps not the best, but they’re really affordable, which is why they make up most of Backblaze’s Hard disk inventory.

Hitachi drives

Hitachi-Logo

  • The 2TB Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K2000, 3TB Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000, 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 and 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 all have an average annual failure rate ranging between 0.9 to 1.5%.
  • Their average age is 2 years. These are really reliable, as shown in the statistics and are by far the best performing brand out of the lot.
  • The only drawback is their premium price.

Western Digital

western_digital_logo

  • The 1 TB Western Digital Green (WD10EADS) and 1TB Western Digital Green (WD10EACS) are durable drives with an average age of 4years.
  • However 3TB Western Digital Red (WD30EFRX) has only an average lifespan of 0.5 years.
  • The average annual fail rate of these, with the exception of 3TB drive, is 3.4%.
  • These drives are the second favorite to the Hitachi ones, but are also priced higher than the Seagate ones.

Smooth drive operation statistics

In a large data center, such as Backblaze’s data center environment, certain brands run smoothly and work well within their disk array configuration-without creating too much work!

The following are the percentages of untroubled operation by brand:

  • Out of 12956 Hitachi drives, 99.99% are active pretty much all of the time with only a mere 0.01% trouble rate.
  • Out of 933 Western digital drives,  they’re active 99.83% of the time and only recorded to trouble 0.17% of the time.
  • Out of 12459 Seagate drives, they’re active 99.72% of the time and have a 0.28% trouble rate.
  • Out of the three brands, Hitachi offers the most resilient hard drives with 96.9% survival rate in three years.
  • The batch of Western Digital Drives have some dying off near the start of implementation.
  • The ones who survive the start are likely to keep going and have a survival rate of 94.8% after three years.
  • The Seagate drives start off strong but drop off as they age. Their survival rate after 36 months is 73.5%.
  • Seagate drives have a reputation for good performance but can suffer as they age and are really affordable.
  • Hitachi offers the best performance in terms of reliability and durability but at the cost of a higher than average price for a hard drive.
  • Western digital is a good all-rounder brand to use.  Backblaze highly recommends the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX).
  • The ones they advise to avoid are Seagate 2TB LP and Western Digital 3TB Green drives, as they’ve not worked well in their environment.

Overall summary of Drives

It’s been approximately three years since Western Digital acquired Hitachi’s 2.5″ hard drive business. Toshiba has also acquired Hitachi’s 3.5″ hard drive business. Could this mean a change, possibly an improvement of quality in any of these brands? We will have to wait and see.

For more ways to secure your data and systems, contact your local IT professionals.

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