Strategies for Data Protection - Brocade

IntroductionData protection is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of technologiesfor safeguarding data assets. Data generated andmanipulated by upper-layer applications is the raw material of usefulinformation. Regardless of their individual products or service offerings,institutions and enterprises today depend on information for theirlivelihood. Loss of data can quickly result in loss of revenue, which inturn could result in loss of the enterprise itself.Because data is so essential for the viability of an organization, findingthe means to protect access to data and ensure the integrity of thedata itself is central to an IT strategy. Data ultimately resides on someform of storage media: solid state disk, tape, optical media, and in particulardisk media in the form of storage arrays. The dialect of dataprotection is therefore necessarily storage-centric. Layers of data protectionand access mechanisms, ranging from high-availability blockaccess to distributed file systems, are built on a foundation of fortifiedstorage and extend up to the application layer. Network-attached storage(NAS), for example, serves files to upper-layer applications, butcannot do so reliably without underlying safeguards at the block level,including redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID), alternate pathing,data replication, and block-based tape backup.A strategic approach to comprehensive data protection includes a parfaitof solutions that on the surface may seem unrelated, but in realityare essential parts of a collaborative ecosystem. Safeguarding datathrough data replication or backup has little value if access to data isimpeded or lost through bad network design or network outage. Consequently,it is as important to ensure data access as it is to protectdata integrity. For storage area networks (SANs), alternate pathing withfailover mechanisms are essential for providing highly available accessto data, and high availability (HA) enables consistent implementationof data replication, snapshot, backup, and other data protectionservices.Strategies for Data Protectioni