Every year on the fourth Thursday of November, American businesses close down for the day as families gather around warm food on a big table. That means that many data centers were short-staffed over this past week, as IT employees around the country took part in our annual tradition of coming together to give thanks. But business in the data center must go on despite holidays, and those who work in IT know that any day off can be ruined when failures occur or disaster strikes.
When most go around the Thanksgiving dinner table and share what they are thankful for, stable health, friends, family and recent good fortunes are generally what comes to mind. But for those concerned about the loss of their organization’s mission critical data, this might have been the year that you declared to your family that you were “feeling thankful for that backup that saved me!”
That is right – intermixed with the stories that focused on golf scores that were lowered or new friendships that were made, there are definitely families out there who had members share tales about how having a trustworthy and complete data protection solution saved them this year.
Let me give you three scenarios where one would be thankful this time of year for backup. Take, for starters, a small business owner who deployed software-defined protection storage across multiple branch locations over this past year as their business grew. When an environmental catastrophe caused the destruction of one of these off-site locations, this individual was thankful that the location’s critical backup had been replicated to his central data center. This business owner was relieved that he had sought out a full protection strategy, of which disaster recovery is a vital component.
Another example might be a family member working in IT for a large corporation. Enterprises today demand continual access to their backup data, which is why this employee lead the efforts to acquire a high availability configuration for their organization’s protection storage. When unexpected downtime eventually did occur, a critical backup was successfully paused and resumed just minutes later without disruption.
Or perhaps at your holiday table you heard the story of an Oracle administrator who was able to take direct control of backup for the first time this year. While data protection has traditionally been server-centric and based around centralized control, modern data management requires self-service. Under the new self-service approach, the app admin no longer has to go through a backup admin when recovery is required. So when there was a need to recover a mission critical backup earlier this month, she was glad to have direct control for a faster recovery.
The leading solution that covers all of these pressing examples comes from Dell. With a complete solution featuring the #1 protection storage plus powerful backup and management software, there is a lot to be thankful for. Visit the Dell Community Network to learn more about how you can consume protection storage anyway you want it and how app owners are acquiring the control they desire with advance integrations. Whatever the environment, Data Domain and Data Protection Suite customers are thankful year-round for the peace of mind that comes with acquiring the leading technology for protection. What were you thankful for this year? Any data protection success stories that stand out in your memory? Let us know in the comments below.
