The Backup Wrap-Up

Creating an effective DR strategy means understanding the critical differences between hot, warm, and cold recovery sites. Join backup guru W. Curtis Preston and his cohost Prasanna Malaiyandi for the latest Backup Wrap-Up as they outline real-world strategies to match your RTO, RPO, and budget. You’ll learn the unique benefits and challenges of using both primary for hot sites, and backup replication to cost-effectively create warm recovery sites.

They also tackle the complexities of cloud DR for VMware environments. Can you do DR of VMware to AWS? What conversion hurdles do you need to plan for? Tune in to find out.

Whether you're a scrappy SMB or an enterprise with serious SLAs, this tactical episode delivers actionable advice to advance your resilience game. Learn how to leverage the cloud's economies of scale and keep business running no matter what gets thrown your way.

The backup wrap up turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes.

When disaster strikes, you better have a solid plan for where you’ll recover your operations. Join me, W. Curtis Preston, and Prasanna Malaiyandi, as we explore the nitty-gritty details of your three main options for a disaster recovery site.

We’ll dig into the pros, cons, risks, and costs associated with rolling your own DR site, hiring a third-party service, or leveraging the public cloud. Each path has its twists and turns. How do you keep a secondary site in sync? What if a regional disaster takes down your DR provider? Can the cloud flex to meet your recovery needs? Tune in for straight-shooting answers.

This episode tackles the tough questions so you can make informed, bulletproof decisions on housing your failover infrastructure. As always, I’m drawing from decades of experience as a recovering backup admin, and I've designed this podcast just for pros like yourself.

Batten down the hatches and prepare to take notes - it’s time to build a life raft for your data!

For those interested in The Gobox Studio, here you go! https://goboxstudio.com/

Staying resilient in the face of disaster is crucial for any organization today. In this episode, we dive deep into crafting robust disaster recovery plans that help you outmaneuver outages.

We discuss critical groundwork like taking inventory across environments and analyzing risk to determine what to prioritize recovering when the worst happens. Whether it's ransomware, natural disasters, or other threats taking systems down, smart preparation makes all the difference.

Key highlights include:

• Figuring out what scenarios are most likely to impact your business based on risk profiles
• Making sure you have visibility into all areas – whether data centers, cloud, SaaS, or endpoints
• Tackling basic protections first before advanced options
• Understanding regional risks that may be unique to your geography
• Thinking through tests that validate your ability to recover when needed

The right disaster recovery means being able to get back to business rapidly. By learning from unfortunate events others have endured, you can architect resilience that lets you bounce back better no matter the scenario.

Are your backups collecting virtual dust rather than readying you for the next unavoidable disaster? Get back to basics on crafting an ironclad disaster recovery plan. We outline the essential infrastructure, applications, staffing, and execution steps often glossed over by the check-the-box enterprise crowd.

Going beyond mere data recovery, we detail considerations around standing up replacement infrastructure, understanding system interdependencies, and restoring functionality faster with increased automation. Cloud's scaling and affordability make DR exercises less daunting these days if configured properly on the front-end.

With major outages increasingly likely, the principles detailed could dictate whether your business emerges unscathed or shutters for good. We share tips for pragmatic preparation reflecting our scar tissue from failures past when lackadaisical DR rigor proved painful. Ever try troubleshooting recovery steps in the midst of a raging hurricane...or gotten that dreaded 2AM offline alert while welcoming your newborn? We have!

Major takeaways:

• Start recovery documentation with manual steps, increase automation later
• Test often - the cloud enables cost-effective exercising at scale
• Availability outshines recovery - build resilient systems and staff cross-training
• Know precise RTOs and RPOs aligned to business priority and appetite

Stay tuned as we separate the mavens from the mayhem when adverse events strike. Get your data DR ducks in order now before things migrate south!

News articles from this episode:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/50k-wordpress-sites-exposed-to-rce-attacks-by-critical-bug-in-backup-plugin/

https://jorgedelacruz.uk/2023/12/06/veeam-whats-new-in-veeam-backup-and-replication-v12-1-major-new-features/

In this episode, Curtis and Prasanna do a deep dive on the differences between data backup and data archiving. They thoroughly explain that while backup focuses on restoring systems and files to a prior point in time, archiving is all about being able to search and retrieve specific information for legal or regulatory purposes.

Key reasons you'll want to tune in:

• Learn exactly why companies archive data and how regulatory compliance and legal eDiscovery requests require specialized archive capabilities.
• Understand the dangers of using your backup system as an archive for eDiscovery - lacking full search and exposing too much irrelevant data risks your legal case.
• Hear multiple real-world horror stories of companies failing legal cases due to lacking proper archives - to the tune of billions of dollars lost.
• Get clear examples of how continuous, comprehensive archiving captures all versions of files, emails, and data - including deleted and intermediate items.
• Get a life-line for those of you who are still using your backup system as an archive

If you need to implement archiving or fix broken archive approaches that risk legal noncompliance, this episode delivers an excellent primer on how archive differs from backup and what genuine archive systems can do.

https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245861992?sjid=15540859157109248518-NC

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/14286582?sjid=8199341837463411967-NA

https://blog.23andme.com/articles/addressing-data-security-concerns

https://www.backupwrapup.com/what-is-archive-and-retrieve-backup-to-basics/

https://www.sullivanstrickler.com

We’re going back to basics in 2024! Our hosts revisit their smash hit episode from last year all about protecting those traditional data sources like physical servers, VMs, laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. From on-prem to mobile, should it all get backed up? How and why? Tune in as Curtis and Prasanna rehash their spirited debate over backup best practices across your infrastructure and walk through real-world examples of what can go wrong. It’s chock full of fundamental wisdom for data protection pros getting started and veterans alike. Whether you’re making big cloud migrations or maintaining legacy systems, don’t miss this special re-release dedicated to the building blocks of backup as we start the year on a backup to basics kick.

This timely episode features an in-depth discussion between cybersecurity expert Melissa Palmer (@vmiss) and hosts W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi on the crucial role preparation and planning play in effectively responding to and recovering from the inevitable ransomware attack.

They stress that flying by the seat of your pants without an incident response plan when ransomware hits leads to chaotic, inefficient efforts and substantially higher costs. Melissa outlines pragmatic steps organizations should take before an attack to develop and test response playbooks, have partnerships in place with response firms, coordinate across internal teams, bolster detection capabilities, and harden backup/recovery mechanisms.

Curtis and Prasanna dive into real-world ransomware response scenarios to highlight the complexity organizations face in assessing the scope of damage from attacks and recalibrating restoration priorities. Melissa offers tips on creating robust processes to rebuild compromised environments quickly. They discuss table-top exercises as cost-efficient ways to uncover plan gaps and get stakeholders aligned on roles and timeline expectations.

With Melissa's depth of experience assisting ransomware victims, she provides unique insights into preparation best practices often neglected until the worst happens. For IT/security leaders looking to build organizational resilience against ransomware threats, this engaging episode delivers actionable advice on architecting defense-in-depth capabilities tailored to your business requirements.

Join us for a great episode!

Changing your organization's backup system is no easy task - it requires careful evaluation of requirements, risks, and capabilities. Many admins get stuck with backup environments they've outgrown or that lag on modern demands.

On this episode, backup guru W. Curtis Preston and his cohost Prasanna Malaiyandi lend their expertise to help you determine if and when migrating your backup solution makes sense. You'll learn:

• Key indicators that your current system is no longer fitting your needs
• How to clearly define backup requirements and alignment to recovery objectives
• Ways to evaluate ease of use, security, and other qualitative factors
• Guidance on integrating specialized systems only when necessary
• The importance of prioritizing immutable storage and rapid recovery
• Change management best practices that curb instability

With ransomware threats growing, the bar for backup keeps rising. Tune in as our two hosts cover everything you need to make backup system change decisions that balance innovation, budget, and risk - avoiding needless switches while still meeting evolving data protection demands. You'll gain real-world clarity that turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes.

After diving into the details of the recent Okta breach enabled by password manager vulnerabilities, Curtis and Prasanna tackle the growing issue of copy data sprawl. They define copy data management – the practice of tracking and governing all duplicated production data for backup, DR, development, analytics etc. What problems result from copy proliferation? How feasible is a single consolidated platform? What regulatory and cost implications exist? Tune in as our hosts break down best practices for cataloging, securing, reducing, and better leveraging your organization’s data copies. Specific topics covered include:

• Password manager risks exposed in Okta hack
• Copy data management 101
• Storage cost, compliance, security issues
• Tools and solutions landscape
• Backup reuse considerations and cautions
• Cloud vs. data center copy management

Join Curtis and Prasanna for another engaging combination of news commentary, frameworks, debates, warnings, and recommendations – this week with a data protection slant. Whether you’re a backup admin or IT leader grappling with copy sprawl, this insightful episode has something for you!

Articles discussed in this week's episode:

https://sec.okta.com/harfiles

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/11/no-okta-senior-management-not-an-errant-employee-caused-you-to-get-hacked/

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/druva-expands-multi-cloud-protection-140000597.htmlhttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/druva-expands-multi-cloud-protection-140000597.html

Tired of backup windows and 24-hour recovery point objectives? Then it's time to learn about how snapshots and replication work together to create near-continuous data protection, or near-CDP.

In this episode, backup experts W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi dive into leveraging snapshots for instant point-in-time recovery and replication for an offsite copy. By combining these technologies, you can achieve recovery point objectives measured in minutes rather than hours or days.

Listen in to understand what near CDP is, how it differs from backup and true CDP, and the key capabilities it enables. Discover when to take crash-consistent vs application-consistent snapshots. Learn how near CDP integrates with backup software and how you can use replicated snapshots for automated recovery testing.

If you need tighter RPOs and near-instant RTOs for your mission-critical systems, you can’t afford to miss this explanation of how snap and replicate delivers a high-frequency, budget-friendly data protection option. Tune in to become a hero by enabling your organization to recover quickly from data corruption, ransomware, and other threats!