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Disaster Recovery in a Web 2.0 World

The changing face of the Web

October 1, 2007 - Web 2.0 Journal, Lori MacVittie

Everyone in IT understands that there are disasters and then there are disasters. Regardless of the scale of any interruption in operations, disaster recovery plans generally comprise details describing how IT will accomplish the two most important tasks they will face in the event of a disaster: business continuity contingencies and the recovery of lost data. While being “down” and “disconnected” from the rest of the world can be financially devastating, losing the data upon which the business relies is equivalent to a monarch losing the crown jewels. Now that's a disaster, no matter what the underlying cause.

Before Web 2.0 made its way onto the corporate stage, a backup – or two – kept us convinced that, should we lose data for some reason, we could always get it back and, more important, get it back in such a state that we'd have lost nothing more than time. With Web 2.0, however, that task has become a bit trickier. There's more data, more often, that needs to be backed up and replicated, and only so many hours in the day (the dreaded maintenance window) in which we can accomplish this important task.

More, More, More

Blogs, wikis, and discussion forums have become fairly standard as part of corporate communications. Internally and externally, they are used to exchange information and provide support for customers and partners alike. The frequency with which data flows through these systems varies, but it is certainly often on par with database transactions and other high-volume, mission-critical applications. For example, F5's own customer-facing Web 2.0 community, DevCentral, sees approximately 30–50 new posts a day, and our internal Web 2.0 community likewise sees a similar daily average. All of these posts contain important nuggets of information that are valuable and would be difficult to re-create should they be lost due to a disaster.

Many of the posts in forums, blogs, and entries on a wiki are considered, or should be considered, essential data. They are comprised of information that's important to the business and customers alike, and therefore should be protected by the same mechanisms through which corporate databases are protected – primarily regular backups and replication.

Most data protection policies require that backups be stored offsite, and the truly disaster-ready know that they should be stored in two places offsite – one that is not related in any way to the business (e.g., a reputable data-storage facility) and one that is digitally accessible to enable quick retrieval and restoration of said data if at all possible.

The latter option usually ends up being a second data center or remote office location. Both remote sites are often connected via a dedicated WAN, but can also be connected using a less expensive VPN over public Internet architecture. In either case, bandwidth is limited and is used for more than just backups and replication. Remote locations usually have remote employees that need access to corporate resources, such as applications and files, and require that some of that bandwidth be available – the more the better.

There's a conflict here that requires a delicate balancing act between ensuring that backups and replications occur in a timely fashion and meet the needs of the users. That delicate balancing act is quickly becoming more difficult as the volume of data grows and requires more and more bandwidth – and time – to move across these lower-capacity pipes. Sure, you can schedule those backups in the middle of the night, but as the volume grows so does the time required to transfer backups from one location to another, and eventually – likely sooner rather than later – your maintenance window will be creeping into the daylight hours and frustrating remote employees.

Less, Less, Less

One of the obvious solutions to this problem is to decrease the amount of data being transferred, or place some sort of control on it to ensure backup data doesn't consume all the bandwidth available (or even both). You can, of course, attempt to back up less data, but then you're likely to be caught in the crossfire between line-of-business owners who all emphatically state that their data is essential and therefore must have priority. You can schedule the backup and/or replication of Web 2.0-related data after the transfer of other backups, but you then run the risk of running out of time and ending up without all that information safely stored in another location.

Which puts you right back into the position of somehow pushing an increasing volume of data through the same pipe, in the same amount of time.

One of the simplest solutions is to take advantage of a WAN optimization controller (WOC). These devices, deployed in pairs – one at the data center and one at the target remote location – use a number of technologies to combat the inherent characteristics of WAN and Internet links that degrade the transfer rates of data, as well as advanced data reduction techniques to reduce the amount of data in transit, resulting in better utilization and faster transfers.

A WOC can also optimize application traffic such as file transfers via CIFS and SMB while reducing the amount of data traversing the wire. This has the effect of improving bandwidth utilization and ensuring that backups are completed in a timely manner without imposing any delay in delivering application and file traffic to remote office users. Optimization and acceleration technologies implemented by a WOC can also help speed up the backup process, as most of the techniques and software used to transfer backups rely on protocols like FTP or TCP, which a WOC can easily optimize to improve the efficiency of the transfer.

Conclusion – Doing More with Less

There's no doubt that while Web 2.0 is changing the face of the Web, it's also changing the amount of data that needs to be protected in the event of a disaster. A WOC can assist in completing backups and the replication of this critical new source of information over the WAN without requiring longer maintenance windows or impacting the performance of applications accessed by remote users.