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Enterprise PC Backup & Recovery – The need for versions!

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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 discussed who is the best initiator for the backup: the desktop laptop being backed up or the backup server, highlighting issues you're likely to face if the backup server tries to initiate the backup to a desktop laptop.  In this post, I'll discuss the versioning capabilities you should look for in a backup product.

Versioning capability is what separates backup from archiving and replication and requires some thought.  When evaluating a desktop or laptop backup software or solution, at a minimum pay attention to the following:

• Ensure that versioning is available: It is important for an enterprise backup software or solution to provide versioning, i.e. the ability to go back to an older version of your data, hopefully multiple older versions. Backup has two purposes in life: disaster recovery and to recover one or more files after they have been corrupted. On a PC, whether a laptop or a desktop, both scenarios are possible: your laptop could be lost or the hard drive on your desktop could crash: both are examples of a disaster, not frequent, but likely. Corruption on the other hand is actually quite common, examples are: if your PC gets infected by a virus or while editing a document you accidentally overwrite a good version, or you delete a file on your laptop or desktop thinking you won't need it again. A backup software or solution - because of its versioning capabilities - protects you against both problems. Replication on the other hand - because it lacks versioning - only protects you against disaster recovery. So, if a virus infects your PC and you are using replication - good luck getting your data back because the infected files would likely have been replicated also, so your only copy is also corrupted. A backup system on the other hand because of its versioning capabilities would allow you to recover an older version of your data.
• Different retention policies for different data type and different users: In an enterprise, there are lots of categories of data and users. One size retention policies don't work for an enterprise laptop or desktop backup solution. Look for a solution that lets you define different data retention policies for older versions based on users and data types. For example, for your executive users' PCs, you may need to retain data for a longer time than for the rank and file employees' desktops or laptops. Also, you may want to retain older versions of user generated data on a PC for a longer duration than application generated data.
• Ability to place a legal hold: In an enterprise, there are times when you need to place a legal hold on the data stored on an end user's desktop or laptop. This may require that you suspend deletion of older versions of your PC stored in the enterprise desktop or laptop backup system.
• Access to different versions: It's great to have older versions available, but they are not of much use if they are not easily accessible. I'll cover this in detail during the recovery requirements, but look for a solution that provides easy access and recovery of older versions of desktop laptop backup data for both end users and administrators.