Enterprise Laptop Backup Software Planning – Backup Scheduling

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This post is part of a Series on planning for Enterprise desktop laptop backup in your organization.  Whether you are considering software or online options for your enterprise PC backup solution there are several items that need to be considered and this series takes a look at those items.  In my last post, I explored factors to consider while creating a backup specification for the desktop laptop population in your organization.  In this post, I'll try to explore whether scheduled backup across a large number of desktop or laptop users can work. 

In general, traditional scheduled backup where you (either IT or end users) have to specify when to backup doesn't work well with desktop and laptop users because it can cause ongoing management burden, network congestion, end user impact and provides the worst RPO (Recovery Point Objective) because:

1. A laptop or desktop can be switched off or disconnected at the time of the scheduled backup - causing the backup to be missed, affecting the RPO. This is especially true of your remote and mobile users who are frequently disconnected from the corporate network.
2. The scheduled backup time may start at a time when the end user is in the middle of their work on their PC, so the backup will be disruptive to them making them prone to disable or kill it. Usually, missing the scheduled backup makes the backup agents more disruptive as they desperately and aggressively try to complete "their job".
3. Backup schedule management is a problem regardless of who is managing it.
• Administrator managed backup schedule: It is onerous to say the least, for an administrator to centrally manage the schedule across a large, distributed PC population, which is constantly changing as large numbers of employees and laptops desktops enter and leave the organization.
• End user managed backup schedule: If end users are responsible for setting the schedule, frequently a lot of them end up specifying the same time causing backup server and network congestion. I've spoken to customers where a majority of their end users picked the lunch time for backups - causing severe network and backup server congestion.

When considered in the context of the large desktop and laptop population in an organization, scheduled backup really doesn't scale.  The reason this option is still prevalent is because from a backup vendor perspective this is the easiest option to implement, so they take the shortcut and put the burden on the customers.  This is especially true of the server backup products which carry their baggage of scheduled backup to the desktop laptop backup usecase also. 

Look for a solution that does not require you to manage schedules.  There are several options: continuous backup, near-continuous backup and self balancing schedules.  I'll explore them in my next post.