Picture it, you've been hard at work on a word document, but suddenly your laptop crashes, and four hours of work simply disappears. Now, imagine that the same thing has happened to ALL your company's data. *Screams in Data Loss* Obviously, Losing data of any kind can be costly to an organization. To combat that, organizations can turn to continuous data protection or CDP. This technology saves a version of your data every time a change is made, so users can easily restore their system to an old version if needed. This is possible thanks to the storage capacity of cloud computing, which allows organizations to save a large amount of data without incurring a large cost.
CDP is Always Saving Data
Traditional backup methods save files at specific points in time -this could be every day or every week - but leaves gaps that could result in lost value for organizations. CDP has no backup schedules, instead, it writes data to a second location when it is saved to disk. This is typically done to another server on the network and does away with the need for scheduled backups. It also means that organizations can restore data from any point in time.
When investing in a CDP solution, there are some key things to note. Some vendors will sell their solutions as CDP when in actuality it follows a set backup schedule, either every hour or every day. That is typically referred to as near-continuous backup and while still helpful, they do not have the immediacy of CDP features. If your organization wants the ability to recover data from any point in time then you should look to CDP.
CDP Protection Goes Deep
CDP also differs from other data protection solutions such as replication or mirroring. With these processes, only one copy of the data is saved. If that data is corrupted, there is no way to restore an uncorrupted version. This could provide some protection if, say, your data was lost, but it does not provide the deep layer of protection that CDP offers.
While CDP is generally well-received, some believe that the constant saving of files can lead to network jams that hurt overall performance. While this sometimes can be the case, network administrators can usually fix the issue with throttling, a process of prioritizing network traffic to ensure important files get priority.
Are You Looking for a Cloud Service Provider in The Bahamas, the Caribbean, or Latin America?
If you're thinking about switching to a cloud service provider, consider Cloud Carib. Located in Nassau, Bahamas, Cloud Carib is a cutting-edge, cloud service provider that offers private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions. If you're looking for tailored cloud solutions from a reliable provider, call (800) 390-2806 to speak to a cloud specialist. 