PST Backup: Laptop Backup Series
Posted by Puneesh Chaudhry on Wed, Nov 03, 2010 @ 07:30 AM
PST backup is a pain for most organizations. Recently, a Linkedin group that I’m a part of, had a big debate re: whether or not PST files should be backed up and how to back them up. There were several opinions, mostly colored by the fact that historically, backing up PST files across a large number of distributed PCs has been a really hard task. In this blog, I’ll look at the key requirements around a successful PST file backup in a large environment. This post is part of an overall series on planning for corporate PC backup in your organization.
For better or for worse if you have a situation where your PCs (desktops and laptops) have PST files on them, you need to backup those files, or you're looking at a potential loss of large amount of data leading to significant productivity loss and worst case loads of regulatory trouble. Historically, backing up PST files has been hard because they are large, are always open and change every day. There are 6 main things to consider when taking on the backup of PST files:
a) Open file backup: This counts as table stakes. If a backup solution can't backup open files well, it's not a good fit for PST file backup, period.
b) Restartability: Restartability is key. If a user kills the backup in the middle of a 5 GB PST file backup, is the backup process going to start all over? Will it send the entire data again, or is it smart enough to know what has already been sent and only send the remainder?
c) Detect PST files anywhere: Users do all kinds of stuff on their PCs, like storing PST files anywhere on the system. A PST backup solution needs to be able to locate PST files anywhere on the PC and back them up.
d) Attachment backup deduplication: There is tremendous amount of duplicate data in your PST files. When someone emails an attachment, that attachment is stored in the sender’s and all of the recipients’ PST files. If your PST file solution is not smart enough to detect and store those attachments only once, you’re going to incur a huge storage burden for backing up multiple copies of those attachments. Look for a solution that can deduplicate the attachments across ALL PST files ANYWHERE in the company, as a result transmitting and storing each attachment only ONCE across the ENTIRE Organization.
e) Bandwidth efficiency: Ensure that the deduplication savings on PST file backups apply to savings on bandwidth as well. This means that the Agent on the PC needs to be smart enough to detect common data across the ENTIRE organization and transmit it only once. Otherwise, the process will simply not work for your remote users because sending GBs of data over slow WAN links every day is just not going to scale.
f) Remote user considerations: Increasingly remote users are infrequently connecting via VPN. However, there is still a need for the backup of PST files for those remote users on a regular basis. Make sure your PST file backup solution can backup data even when your mobile users are not connected over the VPN. Beware of solutions that require you to open firewall ports to the backup server – exposing your backup server with the entire backup data set to the Internet. Look for a solution that can backup remote user data without opening any firewall ports or putting the backup server in the DMZ.
Any backup product can backup large files, but these are real world issues that need to be answered for a scalable and reliable solution for backing up PST files across PCs.
What do you think?