Last updated: December 1, 2021
When it comes to data backup, companies sometimes spend a great deal of money on meticulously backing up their own data and documents. This does not just mean a copy of the current data on an external medium. Rather, it means a sophisticated system of different data carriers and destinations as the destination of the data to be backed up.
And since a good data backup not only saves the current state of the data, but ideally can also access data from the last weeks and months, one can already claim that one has secured oneself well in the truest sense of the word.
In most cases, modern hardware also has an internal diagnostic system that can inform the user about the device’s status. In NAS and server systems, for example, hard disks are continuously monitored and logged. Other storage media, such as the popular backup tapes, are checked during every backup process. Tape drives also have mechanisms that monitor their health.
Backup software also does more than a layperson might realize from the outside. For one thing, it not only backs up data to another medium or destination on the network, but also maintains an internal database that meticulously documents all backup runs. In addition to making it easy to quickly locate lost data, this also has the advantage that the results of each backup can be tracked and viewed. If a backup has not worked for any reason, this is logged there and the person responsible for IT is notified by e-mail or other means of communication.
So far, so good
The “Backup Exec” software from Veritas used in our scenario performs all these tasks (now again) with flying colors. Not only the local data of the server can be backed up, but also the data from other computers in the network can be retrieved via agents and integrated into the backup. Again, the software reports problems with the media or other reasons why a backup may not have taken place.
What I don’t know won’t hurt me
The fact that the messages of a software often contain a lot of cryptic text and not easily understandable paraphrases of the error logs is something that most people have probably noticed more than once. Most of the time, no distinction is made between an omitted file or a more serious error in the backup job. Long texts in the logs also make it difficult to read such messages.
With Docusnap the control is much easier. Already part of the standard repertoire of Docusnap is the report “Backup Exec – Not backed up resources”. This report displays a list of resources that have not been backed up in a clearly arranged manner and can thus be easily monitored by the IT manager. The clear display makes it possible to quickly identify backups that have not been carried out and to react quickly to any problems. After all, nothing is worse than a supposedly functioning backup landscape that does not provide the data you thought was backed up in an emergency.
That’s Docusnap: