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Mastering Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery: Essentials, Pros, Cons, and Cisco’s Strategic Edge

October 28, 2024 Network Solutions

Hurricane satellite image data backups and disaster recovery

The Basics

Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) are key services in IT infrastructure management that help organizations protect their data and quickly recover in the event of a data loss or outage. Here’s a breakdown of each:

Managed Backup

Managed Backup is a service where an external provider or an IT team oversees and manages the process of backing up an organization's data. This includes:

  1. Automated Data Backups: Ensuring data is regularly and automatically backed up at specific intervals, whether daily, weekly, or in real-time.
  2. Storage Management: Handling the storage and security of backup data, often using cloud or off-site solutions to provide a secure, scalable storage environment.
  3. Backup Monitoring and Reporting: Constant monitoring of backup operations to ensure they run successfully, with alerts if a backup fails, and regular reports on backup status.
  4. Data Restoration: Quick and reliable methods for restoring data when needed, minimizing data loss.
  5. Compliance and Security: Ensuring backups comply with industry regulations and are securely stored to protect against unauthorized access.

Managed backup solutions are designed to relieve organizations from the complexities of backup maintenance and provide assurance that data is securely backed up and can be easily retrieved when necessary.

Disaster Recovery (DR)

Disaster Recovery is a broader strategy focusing on maintaining or quickly restoring essential IT infrastructure and data following a disaster. This includes:

  1. Business Continuity: Ensuring that critical business functions can continue during a disaster or that there’s a minimal interruption.
  2. Recovery Plan Development: Creating detailed DR plans outlining steps to take in the event of different types of disasters (e.g., cyberattacks, hardware failures, natural disasters).
  3. Testing and Simulation: Regularly testing DR plans to ensure they are effective and employees are prepared for actual events.
  4. Data and System Replication: Replicating data and systems in separate locations (such as cloud data centers) to facilitate quick recovery if primary systems are compromised.
  5. RTO and RPO Metrics: DR plans often focus on Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), which define how quickly systems need to be restored and the acceptable amount of data loss, respectively.

Managed DR solutions provide organizations with a structured approach to maintaining operations, ensuring they can withstand and recover quickly from unexpected interruptions.

In essence, managed backup protects the data, while disaster recovery protects the operations. Together, they form a comprehensive strategy for data integrity and business resilience.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Managed Backup and D.R.

Here’s a closer look at the benefits and drawbacks of Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery:

Benefits of Managed Backup

  1. Reduced Risk of Data Loss: Managed backups ensure that data is regularly and reliably saved, reducing the risk of accidental or malicious data loss.
  2. Improved Efficiency and Automation: Automated backup processes save time and reduce the chance of human error, ensuring consistent data protection.
  3. Expert Management and Support: Managed backup providers often offer dedicated support, monitoring, and maintenance, allowing IT teams to focus on other priorities.
  4. Enhanced Security and Compliance: Professional providers typically adhere to high security standards and regulatory requirements, keeping backup data secure and compliant with industry standards.
  5. Scalability: Managed backup solutions can easily scale with a business’s needs, allowing for more storage and service options as a company grows.

Drawbacks of Managed Backup

  1. Cost: Managed backup services can be costly, especially for small businesses with limited IT budgets.
  2. Dependency on Provider: Organizations are dependent on their provider's reliability and expertise; if the provider experiences issues, it could impact backup quality or accessibility.
  3. Limited Control: With managed backups, an organization might have limited control over the backup process, such as timing, backup methods, or data retention policies.
  4. Potential Security Risks: Although many providers implement strong security, storing sensitive data with third parties can introduce potential risks of data exposure if security measures fail.
  5. Complex Vendor Management: If an organization uses multiple managed service providers, managing relationships, billing, and service levels can become complex.

Benefits of Disaster Recovery

  1. Minimizes Downtime: DR solutions are designed to keep business-critical systems operational or quickly restore them, minimizing costly downtime in case of disruptions.
  2. Protects Revenue and Reputation: Quick recovery of services and data reduces the financial impact of a disaster and helps protect the organization’s reputation with customers and stakeholders.
  3. Detailed Recovery Planning: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) providers help develop structured DR plans, ensuring that an organization is prepared for different types of disasters.
  4. Focus on RTO and RPO: DR solutions focus on achieving the organization’s Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), reducing data loss and ensuring fast restoration.
  5. Testing and Maintenance: Regular testing ensures DR plans are effective, up-to-date, and that personnel are ready to implement them, increasing confidence in the recovery process.

Drawbacks of Disaster Recovery

  1. High Costs: Implementing DR solutions, especially DRaaS, can be expensive due to infrastructure, support, and testing needs, making it less accessible for smaller businesses.
  2. Complexity in Setup and Testing: Developing a robust DR plan can be complex, and regular testing to ensure effectiveness can require significant time and resources.
  3. Reliance on Providers: In DRaaS, companies depend on third-party providers to maintain DR infrastructure and service reliability. Any issues on the provider’s end could affect recovery.
  4. Data Privacy and Security Concerns: Since DR often involves replicating and storing data in various locations, this can introduce risks of unauthorized access or security breaches.
  5. Incomplete Recovery: Some disasters may impact systems beyond what was planned for, potentially leaving gaps in the recovery process that need addressing.

While Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery provide substantial benefits, such as security, scalability, and minimized downtime, they also come with costs, potential dependency on providers, and security concerns. The decision to implement these services depends on a company’s specific risk tolerance, IT budget, and data protection needs.

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Cisco’s Approach to Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery

Cisco addresses Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery primarily through its own robust platforms and partnerships with leading backup and recovery providers. Their approach centers around ensuring high availability, data security, and rapid disaster recovery, which aligns with their broader focus on network resilience, cloud services, and cybersecurity. Here’s an overview of Cisco’s methods and offerings:

  1. Cisco Managed Backup Solutions

Cisco does not directly provide a managed backup service like traditional backup providers, but it partners with vendors and integrates with various backup platforms to offer secure and efficient data backup options for its customers. Key components include:

Nutanix Partnership:

  • Nutanix specializes in hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and multi-cloud solutions. It provides software and platforms that combine computing, storage, and network resources into a single, virtualized system to simplify data center operations and reduce costs. Nutanix's HCI solutions allow organizations to consolidate traditional IT infrastructure components into a more manageable, software-defined environment, enhancing scalability and flexibility.

With the retirement of Cisco’s HyperFlex, Cisco has partnered with Nutanix to provide an alternative HCI (Hyperconverged Infrastructure) solution, positioning Nutanix software on Cisco hardware as a replacement. This partnership allows Cisco’s UCS (Unified Computing System) servers to run Nutanix’s hyperconverged software stack, thereby filling the gap left by HyperFlex.

This shift enables Cisco to offer hybrid and multi-cloud solutions without maintaining a proprietary HCI platform. Cisco will continue to support existing HyperFlex users, but new investments and resources are now concentrated on the UCS and Nutanix collaboration to meet modern data center needs

Veeam Partnership:

  • Veeam integrates seamlessly with Cisco's infrastructure to enhance Cisco’s backup and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities. Cisco and Veeam work together to deliver comprehensive data protection solutions that leverage Cisco’s computing and networking infrastructure with Veeam’s robust backup, replication, and recovery features. Here’s how Veeam complements Cisco’s backup and recovery strategy:

Integration with Cisco UCS

  • Veeam is optimized for Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), allowing organizations to use Veeam’s data protection features across Cisco’s data center and cloud environments. The combination of Veeam and Cisco UCS provides efficient, high-performance backup and recovery for both virtualized and physical workloads.
  • Veeam Availability Suite can operate on Cisco UCS, offering flexible data backup and recovery options and allowing IT teams to manage backups from a single interface. This setup minimizes complexity and optimizes resource use within Cisco’s data centers.

HyperFlex and Hyperconverged Systems

  • Before HyperFlex was discontinued, Veeam was widely used to protect Cisco HyperFlex environments. It provided image-based, agentless backups and disaster recovery for virtualized applications on Cisco’s HCI platform.
  • Now, with HyperFlex being phased out, the Cisco-Nutanix partnership allows Veeam to continue offering data protection for Cisco-based hyperconverged infrastructure, leveraging Nutanix software and Cisco UCS hardware​

Cisco and Veeam for Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Solutions

  • Veeam’s cloud capabilities align well with Cisco’s multi-cloud strategy, providing a bridge for hybrid and multi-cloud backup and recovery. Veeam integrates with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing Cisco clients to move data protection workloads across on-premises and cloud environments easily.
  • Veeam also supports backup to Cisco’s cloud platforms and provides tools for workload migration, enabling Cisco clients to implement a hybrid cloud strategy with robust data protection and minimal downtime.

Disaster Recovery and Ransomware Protection

  • Veeam’s Immutable Backups: Veeam offers options for immutable storage, a critical feature in Cisco’s DR strategy to protect against ransomware. This capability allows backups to be stored in an unalterable format, essential for fast recovery in ransomware scenarios.
  • Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator: Veeam’s orchestration tools fit well with Cisco’s emphasis on business continuity by automating DR testing, failover, and failback processes, ensuring rapid and reliable recovery aligned with Cisco’s DR requirements.

Automated Management and Scalability

  • Veeam’s solutions integrate with Cisco Intersight, Cisco’s cloud-based platform for infrastructure management. This integration enables IT teams to monitor and manage data protection activities across Cisco hardware from a single interface, simplifying management tasks and improving scalability.
  • By automating backup and recovery workflows, Veeam and Cisco Intersight enhance operational efficiency, allowing organizations to scale backup operations as their data requirements grow.

Veeam strengthens Cisco’s backup and DR strategy by providing flexible, scalable, and highly automated data protection solutions. The combined capabilities of Veeam and Cisco infrastructure offer high availability, fast recovery, and strong protection against data loss or cyber threats, supporting Cisco’s overall goal of resilient, hybrid cloud-enabled data centers. This integration helps Cisco customers meet complex data protection needs efficiently across diverse environments.

  • Cisco Data Center Solutions: Cisco’s data center portfolio (such as Cisco UCS - Unified Computing System) works in tandem with backup solutions from Cisco partners, like Veeam, Commvault, and Rubrik, to enable managed backups across both cloud and on-premises environments.
  • Integration with Cloud Providers: Cisco integrates its products with major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) to support cloud backups and hybrid-cloud data protection solutions, allowing companies to store backup data in multiple, secure locations.
  1. Cisco Disaster Recovery Solutions

Cisco’s Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions are comprehensive, focusing on network resiliency, business continuity, and data recovery:

  • Cisco Disaster Recovery Manager: Cisco offers an enterprise-grade DR solution specifically tailored to communication systems, such as IP phones and video conferencing setups. This allows for continued communication services even if primary data centers are compromised.
  • Cisco ACI and Network Resiliency: Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) helps ensure that disaster recovery processes work seamlessly with network configurations by offering automated network failover and quick reconfiguration to maintain application connectivity in the event of a disaster.
  • Cisco SecureX and Cisco Umbrella: These tools enhance DR by securing data in transit and providing centralized monitoring, detection, and response capabilities for any threat-related disasters (such as ransomware).
  • DRaaS Partnerships: Cisco collaborates with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) providers, like Zerto and VMware, to offer flexible DR options for organizations that need faster recovery times and custom-tailored DR plans.
  1. Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery

Cisco emphasizes hybrid cloud architectures for backup and DR, allowing businesses to use both on-premises and cloud resources:

  • Cisco Intersight: Intersight is a cloud-based operations platform that helps organizations monitor, manage, and automate their infrastructure across data centers and cloud environments. It integrates backup and recovery workflows to streamline DR processes.
  • Cisco Meraki for Network Continuity: Cisco Meraki offers disaster recovery solutions tailored to network infrastructure, allowing organizations to maintain internet access and connectivity even in disaster scenarios.
  • Interoperability with Cloud Backup and DR: Cisco ensures that its platforms can work alongside third-party cloud solutions, so companies can use Cisco infrastructure with AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for comprehensive hybrid backup and disaster recovery strategies.
  1. Backup and DR Security

Cisco focuses strongly on security in its backup and DR solutions:

  • Encryption and Access Control: Cisco backup and DR solutions integrate with security features like encryption, access control, and advanced logging to protect backup data.
  • Cisco Secure Workload: This tool provides security visibility and workload protection, which helps secure data during backup and in the recovery process. Secure Workload monitors traffic, detects threats, and ensures data integrity.
  • Cyber Resilience with Cisco Talos: Cisco’s Talos threat intelligence group helps prevent and respond to threats that could impact backup and DR operations, such as ransomware or phishing attacks. Talos provides real-time threat intelligence, which Cisco integrates into its DR planning and backup monitoring.
  1. Testing and Support
  • DR Testing and Support Services: Cisco and its partners offer testing services to validate DR plans, ensuring systems can be recovered quickly and effectively. Testing includes simulated failovers, network reconfigurations, and full DR scenario testing.
  • 24/7 Managed Support: Cisco’s support team provides around-the-clock assistance for troubleshooting backup issues, implementing DR strategies, and managing infrastructure recovery.

Summary

Cisco’s unique advantage in the backup and disaster recovery (DR) space lies in its ability to integrate network resiliency, high-performance computing, and multi-cloud flexibility into a cohesive solution. Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) and partnerships with leading providers like Veeam and Nutanix allow for seamless, high-performance data protection across on-premises and cloud environments. Cisco’s ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) adds network automation and resiliency, ensuring minimal disruption during recovery operations. Additionally, Cisco Intersight offers centralized management for hybrid environments, allowing clients to monitor, manage, and automate their infrastructure, creating a streamlined and resilient backup and DR strategy​

This convergence of infrastructure, network intelligence, and strategic partnerships sets Cisco apart, enabling companies to secure their data with rapid recovery options and adaptable cloud integration, even across complex environments.

nsi_advance-01Network Solutions, Inc.’s NSI ADVANCE Managed Services (https://www.nsi1.com/nsi-advance) deliver robust IT support tailored to enhance security, connectivity, and productivity.

NSI’s Secure Network solution focuses on protecting network infrastructure with proactive monitoring, threat detection, and data integrity measures, ensuring a stable and secure environment for business operations.

Secure User prioritizes endpoint security, providing user authentication, access management, and continuous endpoint monitoring to safeguard individual devices and user interactions within the network.

And finally, Everyone Connected offers enhanced team collaboration with secure and seamless communication tools, enabling efficient and protected data sharing across distributed teams.

Together, these services integrate seamlessly into NSI’s ADVANCE managed services platform, simplifying IT management while safeguarding critical business assets. NSI ADVANCE Managed Services allows organizations to focus on innovation and growth by offloading IT complexity and enhancing network security and collaboration. The service aligns IT operations with business goals, offering reliable, resilient support across digital workspaces.

If you’d like to learn more about Managed Backup and Disaster Recovery or any other business technology solution, contact the experts at Network Solutions!

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