To effectively protect a file system that is hundreds of terabytes or petabytes in size requires an extensive use of multiple data availability and data protection technologies. The demand for storage is continuing to grow exponentially, and all predictions suggest that it will continue to expand at an aggressive rate for the foreseeable future.
In tandem with this trend, the demand for ways to protect and manage that storage also increases. Today, several strategies for data protection are available and in use. As previously discussed, if data protection is perceived as a continuum, at the beginning lies high availability. Without high availability technologies such as drive, network and power redundancy, data loss and its subsequent recovery would be considerably more prevalent.
Historically, data protection was always synonymous with tape backup. However, over the past decade, several technologies, such as replication, synchronization, and snapshots, in addition to disk-based backup (such as nearline storage and VTL), have become mainstream and established their place within the data protection realm. Snapshots offer rapid, user-driven restores without the need for administrative assistance, while synchronization and replication provide valuable tools for business continuity and offsite disaster recovery.
