Time-Saving Tips to Improve Backup Efficiency

Cloud-first data protection products like SolarWinds^® Backup make it easy to quickly begin basic backup tasks. The inclusion of preconfigured cloud storage and a hosted, web-based management console help get you off to a fast start. However, there are additional time-saving features designed to help you gain efficiency and work smarter. This post discusses four of these less-obvious—but tremendously helpful— features: Backup profiles, auto deployment, LocalSpeedVault^™, and archiving.

Backup profiles

Backup profiles help you standardize your data protection service by device or server type. For example, you may decide that file servers require different backup frequency than application or database servers. Executive workstations may call for different levels of protection than other employees’ laptops.

It’s easy to set up—just click on the Profiles section of the upper-left menu bar to access your options. Define the data sources, backup frequency, and other details, name the profile, and it will be available for fast, consistent deployment any time you want to protect more of the same type of device.

Profiles are strongly recommended when using the next hidden gem on this list: auto deployment.

Auto deployment

Manually deploying backup agents to hundreds of servers or workstations can be time consuming. Auto deployment makes the process fast and easy—saving you time. From the main Backup dashboard, click the Add button. Choose the data source you want to protect—servers or workstations—and select the customer whose devices you’re deploying. Simply select the automatic deployment option and the applicable Backup profile, and you’ll be provided with a download installation package unique to that device.

LocalSpeedVault

While SolarWinds Backup is a cloud-first solution, that doesn’t have to mean cloud-only. Our LocalSpeedVault feature creates an automatically synchronized local copy of your backups using an existing network share or the hardware of your choice. This allows for data recovery over the LAN instead of the WAN.

It’s important to note that the SolarWinds Backup process is not dependent upon LocalSpeedVault, which eliminates a single point of failure you may find with other vendors’ backup appliances, which aggregate all backups before sending them to the cloud. Because our encrypted, deduplicated backups go directly to the cloud from each device, LocalSpeedVault is optional, but highly recommended for the fastest possible recovery.

You can set up LocalSpeedVault as part of the Backup profile, or add it at any time.

Backup archiving

A growing number of industries are subject to data retention requirements, and even where this is not the case, data archiving is good business practice. By using this feature, you’ll be better prepared to respond to any data discovery or legal hold requests that may arise.

You can set up archiving from the local Backup Manager. Just click on the Preferences tab, select Archiving, and define what you want to archive, and how often.

Since SolarWinds Backup typically bills based on the amount of data selected for protection, not based on the amount of cloud storage consumed, your bill won’t change as archives and restore points grow, making SolarWinds Backup a better and better value as time passes.

 

Carrie Reber is senior product marketing manager for SolarWinds MSP.