MSP innovation requires a flexible backup toolkit
As an MSP, addressing specific customer problems often requires thinking outside the box. We have learned that having a flexible backup solution, for one, is essential to meeting diverse needs effectively.
In a recent meeting, long-time N‑able partner Wade Weppler of WW Works mentioned that one of his customers requires high availability for a business-critical application. “High availability,” in this case, meaning two fully replicated servers set up for nearly instant failover. Weppler solved this using Hyper-V’s native replication.
“There’s no extra cost, other than the second server, but Hyper-V replication is complex to set up and manage,” he said.
This is a great example of an MSP thinking outside the box to design a solution using the tools they have at their disposal. Nice one, Wade! It’s also interesting because conventional wisdom dictates that SMBs don’t typically need this level of redundancy.
Why flexible backup and DR technologies are important for MSPs
Of course, conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply with MSPs, as they are in the business of addressing their customers’ specific needs. That got us thinking about why flexible technologies are so important for MSPs.
Let’s dig a little deeper into this with a hypothetical example. In this scenario, we’ll look at three technologies—backup, server-based replication, and backup-driven business continuity—and how they solve different problems. Consider the following three customers:
- Customer A: a store that maintains an inventory database and operates during normal shopping hours.
- Customer B: a regional bank that offers online banking.
- Customer C: a dentist’s office with a database of patient data, including medical images.
Customer A’s database is not necessary to conduct normal business. Additionally, because the store is closed overnight, larger restores could even occur outside of working hours. So, a backup solution that provides fast block-level restores and the ability to “tier” application recovery based on criticality will likely allow them to meet recovery time objectives (RTO).
Customer B, the bank, may need a high availability server-based replication solution because customers expect online banking services to be available 24-7-365. In this case, the Hyper-V failover setup described above might not be appropriate either—a more complex (and expensive) failover clustering solution could be required.
However, as Wade astutely pointed out: Replication is NOT backup, because it does not provide the ability to revert to an earlier version of the data and system state. Server replication provides fast failover but can be compromised by ransomware (yes both replicated copies!). Here, an additional copy in a separate fault domain (e.g. backup) is critical. So, Customer B also needs backup for protection against ransomware attacks, as well as accidental or malicious deletion, data corruption, and so on.
Customer C can continue seeing patients even if their database is down. So, a dedicated high availability solution is an unnecessary expense. However, any prolonged downtime will have a negative impact on operations. So, it is imperative to get their database back online quickly. On top of that, medical imaging files can be quite large and slow to restore from traditional backups. This is an ideal use case for backup-driven business continuity.
A wide spectrum of organizations can benefit from this type of backup-driven business continuity solution, which is why many MSPs use tools like this to deliver disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). And since business continuity is embedded in the backup solution rather than managed via a separate process, operational complexity is greatly reduced.
When all you have is a hammer… everything looks like a nail
Over the past 10 years, image-based backup vendors have painted themselves as the only game in town when it comes to backup-driven business continuity for MSPs. But, image-based backup solutions are a bit of a hammer, eating up tons of backup storage and often requiring proprietary hardware.
Today, there are more elegant alternatives. Cove Data Protection, from N‑able, offers the business continuity capabilities that image-based backup products are known for, minus the expensive storage capacity requirements and proprietary appliances.
Cove’s Standby Image capability lets you proactively stage a copy of your customer’s data and system state in a bootable format (Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, or Microsoft Azure), so critical applications can be restarted more quickly, either locally or in the cloud. You can even specify this level of protection for your critical machines (aka your foundation services) and use on-demand restores for less critical machines. Flexibility is NOICE!
If you only need to restore a couple files (aka 95% of restore jobs) Cove is lightning fast. Compare this with image-based backup tools that may require a full image restore to access a single file. Yes, some image-based tools offer file restore, but the capability was bolted on after the fact and, as a result, is less than efficient. Exchange restores are fast and straightforward, as well. There’s no need to rebuild mailboxes manually or even navigate to a separate dashboard (or completely different backup product, for that matter.)
The all-in-one, flexible backup solution
Cove is flexible. It delivers backup and business continuity in single solution and can be used to meet a wide variety of customer needs. Use a local appliance if the customer requires it. Back up straight to Cove’s private cloud if they don’t! According to Wade, it’s also just plain easy to use, with server, workstation, and Microsoft 365 backup and disaster recovery managed from a single, unified dashboard. “It really is a single pane of glass, and it works very well,” he said. “Plus, it requires less training than other products to get techs up to speed.”
To learn how WW Works uses Cove, check out our latest case study. And, if you are struggling with storage capacity demands or rigid backup hardware requirements, Cove is worth a look:
- To FIND OUT MORE about Cove Data Protection visit www.n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection
- You can book a ONE-TO-ONE DEMO or join one of our live demos by visiting www.n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection/demo
- Or simply start a FREE TRIAL at www.n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection/trial
Andrew Burton is Product Marketing Manager for Cove Data Protection at N‑able