Modern Data Protection

Modern Data Protection

by W. Curtis Preston
Released April 2021
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781492094050

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Book description

Give your organization the data protection it deserves without the uncertainty and cost overruns experienced by your predecessors or other companies. System and network administrators have their work cut out for them to protect physical and virtual machines in the data center and the cloud; mobile devices including laptops and tablets; SaaS services like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce; and persistent data created by Kubernetes and container workloads.

To help you navigate the breadth and depth of this challenge, this book presents several solutions so you can determine which is right for your company. You'll learn the unique requirements that each workload presents, then explore various categories of commercial backup hardware, software, and services available to protect these data sources, including the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

  • Learn the workload types that your organization should be backing up
  • Explore the hardware, software, and services you can use to back up your systems
  • Understand what's wrong with your current data protection system
  • Pair your backed-up workloads to the appropriate backup system
  • Learn the adjustments that will make your backups better, without wasting money

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Table of contents

  1. Foreword
  2. Preface
    1. The Work Continues
    2. Conventions Used in This Book
    3. O’Reilly Online Learning
    4. How to Contact Us
    5. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. Risks to Your Data: Why We Back Up
    1. Human Disasters
      1. Accidents
      2. Bad Code
      3. Malicious Attacks
      4. Terrorism
      5. Electronic Attacks
      6. Ransomware
      7. Internal Threats
    2. Mechanical or System Failure
      1. Power Disruptions
      2. There Is No Cloud
      3. System Failure
    3. Natural Disasters
      1. Floods
      2. Fires
      3. Earthquakes
      4. Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones
      5. Tornadoes
      6. Sinkholes
    4. Takeaways
  4. 2. Gathering and Determining Service Levels
    1. What Does Your Organization Do?
    2. Build Yourself a Framework
      1. Document Templates
      2. Review/Advisory Boards
    3. Collecting Requirements
      1. What Are RPO and RTO?
      2. Find the Subject Matter Experts
      3. Solicit Requirements
      4. Review Requirements
    4. Design and Build Your System
      1. Draw up Multiple Designs
      2. Review the Designs
      3. Select and Build the System
    5. Document and Implement the New System
      1. Defining Operational Responsibility
      2. Operations Review and Documentation
      3. Documentation Is Good
      4. Runbooks
      5. Implement the New System
    6. Takeaways
  5. 3. Backup and Archive Are Very Different
    1. Before We Get Started
    2. What Is Backup?
      1. “Copy”
      2. “Stored Separately from the Original”
      3. “For the Purposes of Restoring”
      4. What Is a Restore?
      5. How Does a Restore Work?
      6. The 3-2-1 Rule
    3. What Is an Archive?
      1. To Serve as a Reference
      2. Stored with Additional Metadata
      3. What Is a Retrieve?
    4. Protecting Backup and Archive Data
      1. Encryption
      2. Air Gaps
      3. Immutability
    5. Takeaways
  6. 4. Backup and Recovery Basics
    1. Recovery Testing
    2. Backup Levels
      1. Traditional Full Backup
      2. Traditional Incremental Backup
      3. Do Backup Levels Matter?
    3. Metrics
      1. Recovery Metrics
      2. Capacity Metrics
      3. Backup Window
      4. Backup and Recovery Success and Failure
      5. Retention
      6. Using Metrics
    4. Backup and Archive Myths
    5. Item- Versus Image-Level Backups
      1. Item-Level Backup
      2. Image-Level Backups
      3. File-Level Recovery from an Image-Level Backup
      4. Combining Image- and File-Level Backups
    6. Backup Selection Methods
      1. Selective Inclusion Versus Selective Exclusion
      2. Tag-Based and Folder-Based Inclusion
    7. Takeaways
  7. 5. Using Disk and Deduplication for Data Protection
    1. Deduplication
      1. What Can Dedupe Do?
      2. How Dedupe Works
      3. Target Deduplication
      4. Source Deduplication
      5. Target Versus Source Deduplication
      6. Hybrid Dedupe
      7. Selecting the Right Dedupe for You
    2. Using Disk in Your Backup System
      1. Disk Caching
      2. Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape (D2D2T)
      3. Disk-to-Disk-to-Disk (D2D2D)
      4. Direct-to-Cloud (D2C)
      5. Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud (D2D2C)
    3. Recovery Concepts
      1. Image Recovery
      2. File-Level Recovery
      3. Instant Recovery
      4. Choosing a Recovery Type
    4. Takeaways
  8. 6. Traditional Data Sources
    1. Physical Servers
      1. Standard Backup
      2. Bare-Metal Backup
      3. Backing Up NAS
    2. Virtual Servers
      1. VM-Level Backups
      2. What Is VSS?
      3. Specialized Backups for Hypervisors
    3. Desktops and Laptops
      1. Laptops as a Cache
      2. Normal Desktop and Laptop Usage
      3. Desktop and Laptop Backup Options
    4. Mobile Devices
      1. Cloud Sync
      2. Physical Sync
      3. Mobile Device Backup
      4. Mobile Device Management (MDM)
    5. Takeaways
  9. 7. Protecting Databases
    1. Database Delivery Models
      1. Traditional Database Software
      2. Platform-as-a-Service
      3. Serverless Databases
    2. Database Models
    3. Consistency Models
      1. Traditional Databases Running in Your Datacenter
      2. PaaS and Serverless Databases
    4. Traditional Database Terminology
      1. Instance
      2. Database
      3. Table
      4. Index
      5. Row
      6. Attribute
      7. Data File
      8. Tablespace
      9. Partition
      10. Master File
      11. Transaction
      12. Transaction Log
    5. Backing Up Traditionally Delivered Databases
      1. Cold Backup
      2. Split Replica
      3. Hot Backup Mode
      4. Snap and Sweep
      5. Dump and Sweep
      6. Stream-to-Backup Product
      7. Transaction Log Backup
      8. Master File
    6. Backing Up PaaS and Serverless Databases
      1. Dump and Sweep
      2. Integrated Backup-as-a-Service
    7. Recovering Traditional Databases
    8. Recovering Modern Databases
    9. Takeaways
  10. 8. Modern Data Sources
    1. The Public Cloud
      1. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
      2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
      3. Serverless Services
      4. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
      5. You Need to Protect the Cloud
    2. Hybrid Cloud Configurations
      1. NFS/SMB Gateway
      2. The Cloud in a Box
    3. Docker and Kubernetes
      1. How Containers Break Backups
      2. Dockerfiles
      3. Docker Images
      4. Kubernetes etcd
      5. Persistent Volumes
      6. Databases
      7. Kubernetes: A New Path
    4. The Internet of Things (IoT)
    5. Making Backup Decisions
      1. Criticality to the Organization
      2. Consider the Source
    6. Takeaways
  11. 9. Backup and Recovery Software Methods
    1. Is Everything Backup?
    2. Backup Methods Supporting a Traditional Restore
      1. Multiplexing
      2. Traditional Full and Incremental Backups
      3. File-Level Incremental Forever
      4. Block-Level Incremental Forever
      5. Source Deduplication
    3. Methods Supporting Instant Recovery
      1. Replication
      2. Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
      3. Snapshots
      4. Near-Continuous Data Protection (Near-CDP)
      5. Copy Data Management
      6. Other Software with Instant Recovery
    4. Leveraging Backups for More
    5. Deciding on a Backup Method
      1. Does What You Have Meet Your Needs?
      2. Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Approaches
      3. Complete Solution
    6. Takeaways
  12. 10. Archive Software Methods
    1. A Deeper Dive into Archive
    2. Retrieval Versus Restore
    3. Types of Archive Systems
      1. Traditional Batch Archive
      2. Real-Time Archive
      3. HSM-Style Archive
    4. Deciding on an Archive System
      1. Do You Need One?
      2. Requirements
    5. Takeaways
  13. 11. Disaster Recovery Methods
    1. Disaster Recovery Becomes Paramount
    2. Ransomware Changed Everything
    3. An Overview of Disaster Recovery
    4. What Is in a DR Plan?
      1. A Box of Tapes Isn’t a DR Plan
      2. A Replicated Dedupe Appliance Isn’t Much Better
      3. It’s All About the RTA
    5. Building a Recovery Site
      1. Roll Your Own DR Site
      2. Recovery-Site-as-a-Service
      3. The Public Cloud Was Born for DR
    6. Keeping the DR Site Up to Date
      1. Cold, Hot, and Warm Sites
      2. Choosing Hot, Warm, or Cold
      3. Recovery Mechanisms
    7. Software or Service
      1. Commercial DR Software
      2. DR-as-a-Service
      3. All-in-One or Best of Breed?
    8. Choosing a Plan
    9. Creating a DR Runbook
      1. Runbook Goals
      2. Overview
      3. Technology Inventory
      4. Contact Information
      5. Procedures
      6. Exception Processing with Escalation
    10. Takeaways
  14. 12. Data Protection Targets
    1. Tape Drives
      1. What Tape Is Good At
      2. What Tape Is Bad At
      3. How Did This Happen?
      4. Tape Drive Technologies
    2. Optical Media
    3. Individual Disk Drives
    4. Standard Disk Arrays
    5. Object Storage
    6. Target Deduplication Appliances
      1. Virtual Tape Libraries
      2. NAS Appliances
    7. Public Cloud Storage
    8. Choosing and Using a Backup Target
      1. Optimize the Performance of What You Have
      2. Select a More Appropriate Device
    9. Takeaways
  15. 13. Commercial Data Protection Challenges
    1. A Brief History of Backup
    2. Challenges with Commercial Backup Solutions
      1. Size the Backup System
      2. Maintain Backup Server OS
      3. Maintain Backup Software
      4. Manage Multiple Vendors
      5. Separate System for DR
      6. Separate System for E-Discovery
      7. Tape-Related Challenges
      8. Disk-Related Challenges
      9. Large Up-Front Capital Purchases
      10. Overprovisioning Is Required
      11. Difficult to Scale
    3. Difficulty of Changing Backup Products
      1. Let Them Expire
      2. Use a Service
      3. Restore and Backup
    4. Takeaways
  16. 14. Traditional Data Protection Solutions
    1. Not Naming Names
    2. Traditional Backup Solutions
      1. Advantages of Traditional Backup
      2. Challenges with Traditional Backup
      3. Analysis
    3. Target Deduplication Backup Appliances
      1. Advantages of Target Dedupe
      2. Challenges with Target Dedupe
      3. Analysis
    4. Takeaways
  17. 15. Modern Data Protection Solutions
    1. Virtualization-Centric Solutions
      1. Advantages of Virtualization-Centric Solutions
      2. Challenges of Virtualization-Centric Backup
      3. Analysis
    2. Hyper-Converged Backup Appliances
      1. Advantages of Hyper-Converged Backup Appliances
      2. Challenges with HCBAs
      3. Analysis
    3. Data-Protection-as-a-Service (DPaaS)
      1. Advantages of DPaaS
      2. Challenges of DPaaS
      3. Analysis
    4. Fully Managed Service Providers
      1. Advantages of Using an MSP
      2. Challenges of Using an MSP
      3. Analysis
    5. Adapting to the Market
      1. Traditional Backup Appliances
      2. Subscription Pricing
      3. Responding to the Cloud
    6. Takeaways
  18. 16. Replacing or Upgrading Your Backup System
    1. Which Solution Is Best for You?
    2. Your Responsibilities
    3. Before You Do Anything
      1. This Is Your Backup System
      2. Consider TCO, Not Just Acquisition Cost
    4. Picking a Solution
      1. Find Any Showstoppers
      2. Prioritize Ease of Use
      3. Prioritize Scalability
      4. Prioritize Future Proofing
    5. Takeaways
  19. Index

Product information

  • Title: Modern Data Protection
  • Author(s): W. Curtis Preston
  • Release date: April 2021
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781492094050