Start-up Helps Ensure Better Data Backups

Computerworld - Sometimes it's the little things that cause the biggest problems. Corrupt files, network outages or forgetting to restart the backup tape are all examples of seemingly little errors that can cause big problems when it comes to recovering storage and server data. So says Roger Oedewaldt, a network administrator at a major New York-based financial services company.

"Everyone backs up data, but not everyone restores it," says Oedewaldt, who identified potential recovery problems last fall after he began using BackupReport from Bocada Inc. to check the recovery rates of his company's disaster recovery servers.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based start-up's software monitors backup data and storage server systems, determines whether data has been properly backed up and offers detailed reports on the potential causes of a backup failure.

Restored Confidence

In using the tool, Oedewaldt discovered that 85% of his company's backups contained major errors that made the recovered data either totally unusable or incomplete.

With BackupReport, Oedewaldt says, he was not only able to determine the success of his backups but also able to pinpoint the cause for backup failures. Since then, he has retrained the server operators and thus eliminated the administrative errors that made 60% of backups fail.

"I feel more comfortable with my restores," Oedewaldt says. "I end up restoring corrupt files two to three times per week, but I'm restoring them before the user makes the request, and I am the one telling the user that they lost one day's worth of work."

"We can reduce the chances that a company is not going to be able to recover their data due to a failed backup," says Mark Silverman, Bocada's CEO.

BackupReport offers 16 high-level error summaries on common problem areas such as locked files and configuration and network errors, plus additional drill-down reports. It also supports disaster recovery tools from Computer Associates International Inc., Legato Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp. and Veritas Software Corp.

David Hill, an analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston, says data recovery has taken center stage for many companies in the past few months but there have been very few tools that address the issue of monitoring those disaster recovery systems.

"They are filling a vital gap," Hill says of tools like BackupReport. "A lot of enterprises need to know whether their backups are actually being done every night."

Diagnosing Backup Failures

Since October, the University of Washington Academic Medical Center in Seattle has been using BackupReport to drill down into the cause of its backup failures, says Fred Peet, manager of technical services and operations.