W. Curtis Preston
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Opinions expressed by ICN authors are their own.
W. Curtis Preston – known as Mr. Backup – is an expert in backup, storage and recovery, having worked in the space since 1993. He has been an end-user, consultant and analyst.
Most recently he has joined the team at Druva, a cloud-based data protection company. He’s written three books on the subject, Backup & Recovery, Using SANs and NAS and Unix Backup & Recovery.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of W. Curtis Preston and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications, Inc., its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.
9 steps to protecting backup servers from ransomware
Restricting access to onsite backup servers and limiting their ability for outbound communication are among ransomware defenses to protect enterprise data.
Ransomware: It’s coming for your backup servers
Compromised backup servers can thwart efforts to restore damage done by ransomware and give attackers the chance to extort payments in exchange for keeping sensitive stolen data secret.
Data archiving: It doesn’t have to be on tape
Long-term data storage can be done in the cloud, on disk drives, and optical disks, but each has some drawbacks.
5 reasons restores can take longer than backups
Backing up data can be fairly quick, but because the steps needed to access the backup and restore it to the live network, restores can be surprisingly slow.
Best backup for 7 major databases
There are many backup options for databases, but here are recommendations for Cassandra, DB2, DynamoDB, MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.
Backup for databases: Get familiar with the type you use
The design of a database determines what method is best suited for backing it up, and those methods vary quite a bit.
Backing up a database depends on how it’s delivered
On premises servers, PaaS, and serverless delivery of databases each has its own backup best practices.
The latest tape storage is faster and holds more, but is it better?
The LTO-9 open standard boosts the transfer speed of magnetic tape, which seems like an improvement, but that might not make tape a more attractive option for backup.
Why aren’t optical disks the top choice for archive storage?
Optical storage can last a century, give faster access to data, and is backward compatible with earlier optical technology, yet disk drives and tape rule in long-term storage.
Tape backup as a defense vs. ransomware
Tape isn’t close to being the perfect backup, but it is pretty impervious to ransomware.
Ransomware recovery: Cloud is the way to go
Cloud-based DR offers incredible recovery speed as well as the ability to pre-restore data.