Updating Of The Backup System

Introduction

It is important to always back up computer data. This should be done every day. Although it may seem like a tedious process, it becomes an indispensable rescue procedure when a computer crashes and the data is directly inaccessible.

One can use several methods for backing up data. One can back up data by using a CD, a Zip disk or something similar. A CD burner has become the easiest way to store data. Burning a disk of important files and programs everyday is a guaranteed way of saving your personal data.

One can purchase software that will automatically back up data. When a computer crashes, the program will retrieve your otherwise "hidden" data with ease. While it may be possible to retrieve the data, a data recovery specialist may still be needed to fix the hard drive.

Either way, data is never completely lost after a computer crash. It may be inaccessible, but a computer specialist or a software program may be able to restore the data. File and program data recovery can be performed so that important data can be retrieved (Johnson, 2003).

In any business, though, it is essential and crucial that all data be preserved. Because of the enormity of data in a business environment, due to the aspect of a networking system, a system of backing up data as similar to those processes mentioned above, regarding backing up data from a PC, would not be feasible. A much more extensive process is needed.

Project

At my office, we decided that we needed to upgrade our tape backup system to make use of the high-tech features that were presently available. We compared our present system to what was available and decided that it would be worthwhile to upgrade, not only considering the improvements in hardware and software features, but also the man-hours the new system was going to save.

Our first course of action was to follow the steps of justification for a new backup system. We used the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) method to evaluate and analyze the process used in this project.

&#61656;<Tab/>Determine where your data is stored.

We have a data center where all the main servers are located, and it is strictly climate controlled, we felt we had this aspect of analysis well established. We work as the IT department for the government that serves different constitutional offices. We are fortunate to be centrally located and have our data center at a point that is easily accessible for us at most points within our working realm.

&#61656;<Tab/>Identifying Processes to Reengineer

One of the biggest processes in need of reengineering was our tape backup system. Although we export our data to an offsite server, the export has little restrictions and little need to reconstruct the process. Our tape backup system was showing its age, and with the advancements of present tape backup processes we felt that the time saved on our present manual process by changing over to the new features would result in a significant financial savings to our office.

&#61656;<Tab/>Determine what backup strategies you are using now. Identify specific activities that can be radically improved through reengineering.

Within the process involved in determining the need to change our tape backup system, we asked ourselves these questions:

1. How important is the activity to delivering an outcome?

2. How feasible is changing the activity?

3. How dysfunctional is the present activity?

The most crucial activity needing to be radically improved through re-engineering was the manual tape back process itself. Although triggered to automatically begin the backup process during the evening hours, it was the manual process of needing to arrive an hour before the workday is to begin and swap the previous tapes from their individual drives with the next days tapes that needed revising. This includes the process verifying that the last night's backup was a success, then erasing the prior data on the new tapes before inserting tapes in their drives.

<Tab/>As we had always kept a log of our backup progress, we needed to observe documentation from other offices that have used alternate backup systems. We also used JAD sessions and CASE tools such as diagramming methods for collecting systems requirements to display what should be our best approach.

We concluded that our best choice for upgrading our tape backup system would be to purchase and apply a multi-tier, multi-tape DLT rack backup server. This system would replace the single DLT tape drive system we were currently using, and should by all means save several man-hours per week.

History of DLT

Digital Linear Tape (DLT) was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital). For many years DLT was mainly sold as a captive solution with Digital computers. Over time, Digital saw the opportunity of offering DLT products to the open systems market and began selling the product on a broader basis. But it was not until Quantum acquired DLT from Digital that DLT really took off. Several factors converged to drive the demand for DLT. First, there were concerns in the market about the reliability of existing server-based tape products. The majority of offerings