INTELLIGENT DATACENTRES
Building hybrid availability solutions for remote offices
A suitable mix of backup and virtual machine replication may be best solution for remote offices, argues Rawad Zaki at Veeam Software.
So, how can remote and branch offices achieve excellent levels of availability without facing complexity?
The modern datacentre has three key attributes:
• Virtualised
• Storage
• Cloud
We have all heard about fantastic new datacentre technologies, but all too often it looks like these technologies only seem to apply to the largest organisations with a wealth of centralised resources. Because data does not just live in the datacentre, we often face daily challenges when data is put to use in the field at remote offices and branch offices.
Business and IT leaders need to recognise the unique needs of remote and branch offices. For instance, teams based in remote offices need constant, reliable and fast access to essential data, without sacrificing data security and integrity. A challenge for IT leaders is how to ensure that data is available, even without a dedicated local IT team to govern and control it.
Industry reports showed that half of the respondents only test backups on a monthly basis, or even less frequently. Long gaps between testing increase the chance of issues being found when data needs to be recovered – at which point it may be too late for these organisations. And out of those who do perform such tests, just 26 % test more than 5 % of their backups. This means that the vast majority of backups are not verified and could fail. The percentage is even higher when it comes to remote and branch office locations.
The good news for remote and branch offices is that it is now easier than ever— with the help of the right solutions— to extend datacentre backup, replication and availability capabilities all the way out to the edges of an entire organisation.
Each of these attributes is critical to a remote and branch office’ s success. However, because of each remote and branch office’ s specific needs, there are no real roadmaps for building and implementing architecture for a remote office.
Virtualisation has a huge impact on remote and branch offices. From reduced equipment footprints and lower setup costs, to simpler management workloads and faster deployment of new services, virtualised environments have become the natural choice for remote and branch offices.
Modern storage systems have also made life a lot easier for remote and branch offices. Whether it is a new solution rolled out to serve every branch or a solution that is just deployed on site, new storage solutions are helping remote and branch offices store— and what is more important, backup and replicate— their data more intelligently.
The cloud is now a suitable option to move and store backup and replicated data, unlike the leased private lines that are often a significant performance bottleneck to perform this task. Many organisations struggle to select the best solutions for onsite and off-site backup, because there really is not a one-size-fits-all approach for remote office architecture.
36 Issue 03 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS