The 3-2-1 data protection rule and hybrid cloud backup with NetApp

IT teams are under extreme pressure to improve backup, disaster recovery and data protection to eliminate downtime and facilitate digital transformation.

Many IT leaders are embracing modern availability solutions to implement the 3-2-1 data protection rule as a best practice, according to a white paper by Veeam.

The 3-2-1 data protection rule allows organizations to leverage the combination of storage snapshots, availability software and hybrid cloud to cost-efficiently modernise data protection and recovery to enable the Always-On Enterprise.

84% of IT decision makers say they suffer from an availability gap, meaning they would like to improve backup and recovery times and do a better job of mitigating the costs and risks of unplanned downtime and the potential loss of critical business data.

For many organizations, the answer to closing the availability gap is to embrace the 3-2-1 data protection rule, which is:

3: Maintain at least three copies of your data and applications. This would be your production copy and two backups. If your production copy and primary backup copy become unavailable, you can still recover from your third copy.

2: Store your data on at least two different types of storage media. Each media type has its own vulnerabilities. By using two different types of storage, such as disk and tape, you can reduce your exposure to a single incident, such as ransomware, preventing access to your critical data.

1: Keep one of the backups in an off-site location. If all your copies are in the same location, they can all be affected by a major event such as a fire or other natural disaster.

For IT decision makers, the challenge is not a lack of awareness of the 3-2-1 data protection rule, but how to implement it without creating additional IT costs and complexity.

Yet, IT teams can deploy a simple and cost-efficient solution to leverage point-in-time storage snapshots and facilitate 3-2-1 backup and disaster recovery best practices in hybrid cloud environments.

The solution is to use NetApp enterprise storage solutions in conjunction with the Veeam Availability Suite.

The Veeam Availability Suite directly integrates with the NetApp ONTAP operating system and works hand-in-glove with NetApp storage snapshots to give IT teams a simple and efficient way to orchestrate and manage the availability of critical business workloads across hybrid cloud environments.

By leveraging the Veeam Availability Suite in partnership with NetApp ONTAP storage solutions, IT teams can lower costs, improve RTOs and RPOs, reduce complexity and adhere to 3-2-1 best practices in data protection to meet modern availability challenges.

For more information, download the Veeam white paper on The 3-2-1 Data Protection Rule and Hybrid Cloud Backup.