<img class="size-full wp-image-5790 alignright" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Gremlin.png?resize=372%2C197&ssl=1" alt="Gremlin" width="372" height="197" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Gremlin.png?w=372&ssl=1 372w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Gremlin.png?resize=300%2C159&ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 372px) 100vw, 372px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Your company’s data is in danger. Every day, those hidden little IT gremlins are on the hunt, waiting to poach your ability to access your files when you need them most. Routine headaches like drive and chassis failures seem to happen at the most inopportune times, and any downtime can prove severely disruptive to business processes. The good news is that you and your team aren’t alone in this fight to protect your data.
With the right storage, you can have an elite team of park rangers, ever <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/protecting-data-cloud-age-object-storage-part-2/">vigilant for signs of failure</a> and diligently working to keep your data fully available—before you even know any hardware failed. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ve read about how object storage can protect your data, <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/protecting-data-cloud-age-object-storage-part-3/">even from catastrophic loss</a>. Today I’d like to take you a little deeper into our philosophy on how to recover from hardware failures, especially as your data grows over time.
Active Recovery 
Hardware failures happen; it’s a fact of life. Lose too much hardware, and you begin to irretrievably lose data, and that is one of the worst things that can happen for a business. Any time hardware goes down the clock starts ticking. The gremlins are hunting your data, your storage solution has a finite window of time to restore the affected data before it becomes extinct.
Some solutions rely on a passive recovery scheme. In these scenarios, data recovery is only attempted when data is read. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a head-in-the-sand approach that does little to protect your data from the realities of life.
From our perspective at Caringo, once a hardware failure has been detected, you need an active recovery process that immediately begins. If your storage is designed so that all volumes in the cluster participate, the desired protection level for anything that was affected should be restored almost instantaneously. During the active recovery, requests from the outside should be serviced as usual, even though within the cluster the nodes are busily repairing the data. We coined the term <a href="https://www.caringo.com/swarm-technology#1455571610054-b4dee573-cf27">Fast Volume Recovery</a> for this process and it is a key feature we provide in Swarm.
Fast Volume Recovery 
Every node in a Swarm cluster checks to see if its volumes contain either replicas or <a href="https://www.caringo.com/resources/faqs.html#q9">elastic content</a> (EC) segments of objects affected by the failure. If the node does not have any affected data, it goes back to its normal business. If affected data does exist on the node, however, then it immediately tells the cluster to create a new replica or EC segment to restore the protection level for the object. This continues until all the data has been restored, and the cluster is once again at full protection.
Simple, right? For any given volume, the data needed to restore that volume resides elsewhere in the cluster so there is no single point of failure. It may seem that the more data there is the longer this process would take, but there’s a really neat trick hidden in all of this: As your cluster grows, data recovery actually gets FASTER!
Let’s walk through two examples that show how this works.
Strength in Numbers<img class="size-medium wp-image-5779 alignright" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-01.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1" alt="Data Protection Blog Graphic 01" width="300" height="250" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-01.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-01.png?w=625&ssl=1 625w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />  
How is it that the more your storage needs grow the safer your data becomes? Consider the following simplified scenario. Let’s say you have four 1 TB drives spread out across a few nodes, and for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume your cluster uses the default protection scheme of two replicas.
In this small cluster, each node has its data spread out across the rest of the cluster. The actual distribution will vary over time, but on average we can expect each volume to be protecting 33% of the data of each of the other volumes. 
If a given volume goes down, each of the other volumes will work in parallel to restore their portion of the affected data. Here’s what that participation looks like over time:<img class="size-medium wp-image-5780 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-02.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1" alt="Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-02" width="300" height="250" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-02.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-02.png?w=625&ssl=1 625w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />
So that we can draw a clear contrast, let’s say that the cluster eventually doubles in size to eight volumes. Now each volume is only responsible for 14.2% of the data on each of the other volumes. Here’s what that participation looks like over time:
<img class="size-medium wp-image-5781 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-03.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1" alt="Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-03" width="300" height="250" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-03.png?resize=300%2C250&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Data-Protection-Blog-Graphics-03.png?w=625&ssl=1 625w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />
As you can see, the recovery is faster this time. But why is that?
In the first scenario, even though all the volumes were working in parallel, each had to do a max of roughly 333 GB worth of work. In the second scenario, the data was more spread out. Each volume only had to do a max of roughly 143 GB worth of work. Since they were all working at the same time, the overall recovery completed much faster. As the cluster continues to grow, the benefits continue to improve as well.
However long it takes for the volumes to restore their data, that is the cluster’s window for potential data loss. The smaller that window, the better your data is protected. Using stronger data protection schemes (more replicas or a different EC encoding) can further enhance your data protection.
Conclusion 
Faster recoveries mean less opportunity for another hardware failure to occur while your data is at risk. And as your data needs grow, you need to rest assured knowing that your data protection is automatically growing along with it.
If you want to learn more about how you can use object storage to keep data safe and accessible for your organization, check out this <a href="https://www.caringo.com/whitepapers/protecting-data-cloud-age-caringo-swarm-object-storage/">whitepaper</a> on protecting data. Also, join Caringo VP of Marketing Adrian Herrera tomorrow on the <a href="http://www.megacast.io/5-18-storage-megacast">Storage Megacast.io</a> where you can evaluate and compare six different enterprise storage solutions back to back.
<a href="http://www.megacast.io/5-18-storage-megacast" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-4373" src="https://www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Register-Now.svg" alt="Register Now" width="352" height="65" /></a>
If you have questions about whether object storage is the right solution for you, <a style="line-height: 1.5;" href="https://www.caringo.com/company/contact.html">contact us</a>. We would be happy to help!

Protect your data and ensure active data recovery with Caringo Swarm. As your storage needs grow, your data protection automatically grows with it.

Brian Guetzlaff is a software developer with varied interests and a fascination with distributed symmetric systems. As an Engineering Manager at Caringo, Brian helps give a face to Caringo’s technology. He loves time with family, spending time in nature, cooking, and coffee…lots of coffee.

Brian Guetzlaff

Caringo Swarm Object Storage provides an active archive (limitless & seamless pool of data) with data protection, management and search capabilities.

Backup &amp; Recovery

With Caringo Swarm Object Storage, you get continuous, built-in data protection along with exceptional resilience, recovery, and content integrity. 

Data Protection

Elasticsearch is a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with HTTP web interface; it is fully integrated into Swarm Object Storage.

Elasticsearch

Object storage (object-based storage) is computer data storage architecture that manages data as objects, as opposed to file storage & block storage.

Object Storage

Swarm Storage provides a complete S3-compliant platform for data protection, management, organization & search at massive scale for unstructured data.

Swarm Storage

active archive

active data recovery

Data Protection & Active Data Recovery

Backup & Recovery

<img class="size-medium wp-image-5254 alignright" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back.png?resize=256%2C300&ssl=1" alt="Got-Your-Back" width="256" height="300" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back.png?resize=256%2C300&ssl=1 256w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back.png?w=498&ssl=1 498w" sizes="(max-width: 256px) 100vw, 256px" data-recalc-dims="1" />It’s an unpleasant reality of many an IT professional: That 3 a.m. phone call that a crucial system is down, its data irretrievable, and the last backup needs to be restored now. Not only can that mean scrambling to find keys amidst unsavory utterances, retrieving the latest backup media from an offsite location, and getting to the data center, but restoring data can take hours for a first-tier filer (and that’s if everything goes well).
As we celebrate <a href="http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">World Backup Day</a> this week, wouldn’t it be nice if data could be automatically protected, even in the event of losing an entire rack of hardware? Wouldn’t it also be nice if backups for critical Windows or NetApp filers could be minimized in scope, making your life easier when preparing for and responding to an emergency?
Easier Backups: Preparing for Inevitable Hardware Failures 
This is that all-important yet oh-so-mundane part of life as an IT pro. You know things will eventually go wrong, just not when. To be prepared you back up critical data, right? With email servers, databases, home directories, and business-critical files all in the mix, this can be a fairly daunting process. That is, if you’re using conventional backup strategies.
With object storage, however, much of that pain goes away. By nature, an object storage cluster <a href="https://www.caringo.com/whitepapers/protecting-data-cloud-age-caringo-swarm-object-storage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">protects</a> data internally by either creating multiple copies (replicas) of the files within it or by using a RAID-like erasure coding algorithm to provide similar levels of protection in a smaller footprint. Content that is more immediately important can have a higher level of protection, then after some period of time when it is no longer as actively needed, the protection level can be automatically scaled down to free up resources for newer data. Best-of-breed solutions will even let you mix and match protection schemes as needed to best meet your business and departmental needs.
To get more to the point: When you store files in object storage, no further back up is needed.
Certain types of files and data (rapidly-updated databases come to mind) do not naturally mesh well with object storage, and are still better-suited for residing on a filer. So what about those filers I mentioned earlier? Keep them! They are great for people and applications that require a traditional file system. You may be asking, “How do I move the data from those filers into object storage?” This was a problem we set out to solve, and last year, we launched a groundbreaking new product called FileFly for Swarm to help you do just that. <a href="https://www.caringo.com/filefly/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">FileFly</a> can automatically migrate other files (based on whatever policy you like) into Swarm object storage, allowing you to realize the benefits of automatic protection. This essentially leaves just a slice of your former data backup needs. Less data living on filers = less data to back up = more time for you to focus on other more important (or, let’s face it, fun) tasks.
Check out part 2 of this blog on Thursday, World Backup Day, about how you can get your data back almost instantaneously when disaster strikes!
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-5261 size-medium" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wbd_horizontal.png?resize=300%2C146&ssl=1" alt="World Backup Day" width="300" height="146" data-recalc-dims="1"></a>

Move your data from filers to object storage and get automatic data protection. Store your files in object storage and no further data backup is needed.

Swarm Object Storage is a valuable tool in disaster recover (DR) strategy, giving you data resilience and simplifying recovery of data on or off prem.

Disaster Recovery

Caringo FileFly provides complete, automated lifecycle management for unstructured data—from creation to preservation, on premises and in the cloud.

FileFly

If data security is critical to the success of your business, extend World Backup Day from personal to professional call to examine backup strategy.

World Backup Day

Object Storage: We’ve Got Your Back, Part 1

<img class="size-medium wp-image-5288 alignleft" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back-2.png?resize=300%2C172&ssl=1" alt="When Disaster Strikes" width="300" height="172" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back-2.png?resize=300%2C172&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Got-Your-Back-2.png?w=498&ssl=1 498w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Earlier this week, I <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/object-storage-weve-got-back-part-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">talked</a> about how object storage gives you the benefits of automatic protection. Of course, the whole point of backing up is to prepare for the reality that hardware fails at the most inopportune times. IT shops vigilantly prepare for this, but once things go south, there is always the question of what to do to fix the problem.
When Disaster Strikes: Getting Your Data Now 
The great thing about keeping your data in object storage is that when a storage volume, chassis, or rack goes down, the rest of the cluster automatically steps in and actively restores the data for you without you having to lift a finger. This protection can even span across multiple data centers, for example to a remote disaster recovery site, so an entire location’s data can be protected in the event of a major calamity.
So, now your backup processes have been streamlined, you’ve got your data automatically replicating to your DR site, and you’re getting the best sleep you’ve had in weeks…then it happens. Something major goes wrong and you need to make sure all the data is there. What do you do?
Well, if you have a <a href="https://www.caringo.com/swarm-technology" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Swarm</a> object storage cluster, all that is needed is to simply replace the failed hardware—AT YOUR LEISURE. The cluster will automatically assimilate it and put it to work. If the failure was large enough to cause data loss in your local cluster, then restoring the lost data is often as simple as telling your disaster recovery cluster to replicate the data back to the primary cluster.
For your filers, recovery is a much faster process than before. Since less data was kept on disk, less data needs to be restored. That means your data is available faster with less downtime, everyone can breathe a huge sigh of relief, and you get to go home a hero (Take the credit, we don’t mind!).
It’s not pessimism, it’s reality: things break, and that will have an impact on your business. But as with other areas of life, it is how you recover that makes the difference. Leveraging the power of Swarm object storage can make that backup and recovery much faster, easier, and more cost effective than ever before.
If you have questions about whether object storage can simplify the backup strategy for your enterprise organization, <a href="https://www.caringo.com/company/contact.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">contact us</a>. We’d be happy to help.
Happy World Backup Day!
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-5261 size-medium" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wbd_horizontal.png?resize=300%2C146&ssl=1" alt="World Backup Day" width="300" height="146" data-recalc-dims="1"></a>

Stop living in fear of a hardware failure, object storage makes data recovery faster, easier and more cost effective. Simplify your backup strategy with Caringo Swarm.

As you define your storage strategy, what are the required characteristics for each tier of your storage and what variables affect each storage tier?

Strategy

Object Storage: We’ve Got Your Back, Part 2

<img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Protect-Data-Graphic.png?resize=281%2C283&ssl=1" alt="Protect-Data-Graphic" width="281" height="283" class="size-full wp-image-10186 alignright" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Protect-Data-Graphic.png?w=281&ssl=1 281w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Protect-Data-Graphic.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w" sizes="(max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px" data-recalc-dims="1" />Last week, I blogged about both <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/world-backup-day-data-protection-part-1">traditional backup strategies</a> and some of the newer paradigms for data protection. Here at Caringo, we provide our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm">Swarm object-based storage</a> (available as software only or as a complete software and hardware solution, our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/appliances/single-server">Single Server Appliance</a>). Our products have an interesting relationship to the traditional notions of backing up data. On the surface, data protection looks very different in our world; but in reality, many of the same principles still apply.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">The 3-2-1 Backup Rule</h3>
You are probably familiar with the 3-2-1 backup rule. It dictates that you have three or more independent copies of your data, you store the copies on two different types of media and you maintain one of those backup copies off site.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">The Principal of Maintaining Redundant Copies</h3>
For example, backing up data is all about having redundant copies of your files so that if the primary copy is destroyed you have an option to fall back on. In our Swarm object storage technology, the software is continuously monitoring the data to ensure multiple copies are available at any given time. 
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Maintaining a Copy Off-Site</h3>
A best practice for backing up data includes keeping at least one copy off-site, and many object storage solutions (ours included) make it easy to do just that. In Part 1 of this blog, I noted that there are a lot of off-site storage options for backup data⏤from tape to an operational disaster recovery site that can feed data back at a moment’s notice. And of course, there are cloud solutions like Amazon (AWS), Google, Azure or a private cloud, such as those that can be built with Caringo Swarm.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Cost Considerations for Protecting Data</h3>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Data-Protection.png?resize=300%2C206&ssl=1" alt="Data-Protection" width="300" height="206" class="size-medium wp-image-3733 alignleft" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Data-Protection.png?resize=300%2C206&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Data-Protection.png?w=600&ssl=1 600w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />With low costs for “cold” storage and high levels of baked-in protection, the popularity of cloud solutions is really not all surprising. But for companies with legacy systems, determining how to protect their data in the cloud may seem a daunting task. (Check out our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/whitepapers/protecting-data-cloud-age-caringo-swarm-object-storage/">Protecting Data with Caringo Swarm Object Storage</a> whitepaper to learn how our built-in, continuous data protection works like “a ship carrying and protecting your data as the river of hardware changes over time.”) 
The challenge of determining how to protect data in the cloud was one of our motivating factors at Caringo for the recent release of our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/filefly">FileFly 3.0 Data Management Tool</a>, which now allows for automated backing up of data to a <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm/technology">Swarm cluster</a> or to AWS, Google or Azure clouds—according to your policies and your timing.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Policy-Driven Data Management with FileFly</h3>
<a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm.png?resize=480%2C270&ssl=1" alt="using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm" width="480" height="270" class="wp-image-13797 size-medium aligncenter" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm.png?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm.png?resize=320%2C180&ssl=1 320w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm.png?resize=480%2C270&ssl=1 480w" sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a>
With FileFly, data movement is governed by policies that describe the protection needs of the data as well as which back-end data store or stores best fit the business needs for that data. For example, frequently accessed data can be backed up every few minutes to both an object storage cluster and to the cloud, while infrequently accessed data is perhaps sent to cold storage once a week. FileFly allows for these sorts of policies to be defined in advance so administrators can move on to other tasks without having to worry about overseeing arduous backup tasks. It’s your data, protected your way.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Learn More</h3>
To learn more, watch our Tech Tuesday: <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/using-filefly-manage-data-azure-google-amazon-swarm">Using FileFly to Manage Your Data with Azure, Google, Amazon or Swarm</a> webinar on demand or <a href="https://www.caringo.com/contact">contact us</a> to talk to a storage expert or to schedule a demo.

backing up data is all about having redundant copies of your files so that if the primary copy is destroyed you have an option to fall back on.

Caringo uses Amazon S3 protocol for seamless policy-based tiering of data from primary storage to private Swarm cloud to public cloud.

Amazon S3

World Backup Day & Data Protection, part 2

<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/wbd_horizontal.png?resize=300%2C146&ssl=1" alt="World Backup Day" width="300" height="146" class="alignright wp-image-5261 size-medium" title="World Backup Day" data-recalc-dims="1">Over the last several years, it’s been encouraging to watch the popularity of <a href="http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">World Backup Day</a> grow over time. While the day is designed to encourage individuals to back up their personal data, it is also a concept critical to employ in the business world. I recently read a <a href="https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2019/03/25/world-backup-day-on-march-31/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">StorageNewsletter post</a> that stunned me with stories of businesses large and small who had been severely hurt (or ruined) by lack of an adequate backup solution. With data security being central to the success of companies, we would all be wise to examine the effectivity of backing up or protecting critical business data!
In homage to this year’s World Backup Day, here’s a quick review of the current state-of-the-art in backup methodologies for businesses
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Backing Data Up to…Where?</h3>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5-Issues-Tape-Backup.png?resize=98%2C114&ssl=1" alt="Issues-Tape Backup" width="98" height="114" class="alignleft wp-image-5985" title="Issues-Tape Backup" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5-Issues-Tape-Backup.png?resize=259%2C300&ssl=1 259w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5-Issues-Tape-Backup.png?w=312&ssl=1 312w" sizes="(max-width: 98px) 100vw, 98px" data-recalc-dims="1" />There are a lot of off-site storage options for your backup data. Some people choose to have a physical closet packed full of tapes at the cost of high restore latency, while others choose to have an operational disaster recovery site that can feed data back at a moment’s notice. Still others choose to use a cloud solution, whether AWS, Google, or Azure.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Backing Up What Counts</h3>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1" alt="devices sending arrows indicating direction flow to cloud for transfer" width="300" height="300" class="alignright wp-image-1096 size-medium" title="devices sending arrows indicating direction flow to cloud for transfer" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1 1024w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cloud-Data.png?w=3000&ssl=1 3000w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1" />No matter where you choose to store your data, there will always be a cost associated with it.  One of the big questions to ask, then, is how to balance protection characteristics (durability, availability, latency) with the invoice every month. One easy way to reduce that bill is to make sure you only backup the data you really need.
After all, if you’re an IT administrator and your users have home directories full of cat pictures and other clutter, do you really need to incur the time and expense to protect those files?  Or would that be better spent on more/better/faster protection for your critical business data?
Top-tier backup solutions allow administrators to define policies beyond a wholesale copy of a drive’s data. Rather, they let admins set fine-grained policies to only deal with the data that matters.
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Knowing Your Data</h3>
Some data can tolerate having the last few hours’ (or days’) worth of changes be lost in a disaster, but some data cannot. It is important for the owners of this data (and the administrators tasked with protecting it) to have some sense of the loss tolerance of their data.
These different protection requirements have also pushed backup solutions away from large batch protection at set intervals (such as an administrator sitting by a tape deck, waiting to swap out cassettes and push “resume” for hours on end). Instead, data protection now happens on a more continuous basis and for many IT organizations has replaced the concept of “backing up data.”
<h3 style="margin: 1.75em 0 1em;">Learn More</h3>
As Warren Buffet famously said, “in order to succeed you must first survive.” Protection of ever-expanding data sets has become absolutely critical to ensure that survival. Join us in celebrating World Backup Day! 
If you have questions about protecting your data, please <a href="https://www.caringo.com/contact">contact us</a>. And watch for part 2 of this blog where I explore how you can easily protect your business data by incorporating Caringo Swarm, our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm/technology">field-hardened S3-compatible storage platform</a>, and <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/filefly">using Caringo FileFly Data Management Tool</a>, which provides you with the option to move your data into Caringo Swarm, Amazon (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google cloud platforms.

World Backup Day is designed to encourage individuals to back up their personal data. Options and strategies for backup and data protection.

Tape storage refers to storage medium that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape, typically for an inexpensive offline, archival data store. 

Tape Storage

World Backup Day & Data Protection, part 1

<a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/using-swarm-object-storage-content-portal-ui" title="Watch Video Swarm Content Portal UI"><picture class="wp-image-13321 alignright sp-no-webp"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.webp 480w,https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.webp 320w,https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.webp 603w" sizes="(max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px" type="image/webp"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?resize=480%2C267&ssl=1 480w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?resize=320%2C178&ssl=1 320w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?w=603&ssl=1 603w" sizes="(max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px"><img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?resize=334%2C186&ssl=1" class="wp-image-13321 alignright sp-no-webp" height="186" width="334" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?resize=480%2C267&ssl=1 480w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?resize=320%2C178&ssl=1 320w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SwarmContentPortalU-Features.jpg?w=603&ssl=1 603w" sizes="(max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px" data-recalc-dims="1"></picture></a>By now, you’ve likely heard about <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/back-basics-object-storage" title="Read the Back to Basic Object Storage Article">Caringo Swarm</a> Hassle-Free, Limitless Object Storage: what it is, how it performs, its built-in continuous data protection, and how it’s helped all kinds of folks in a <a href="https://www.caringo.com/solutions" title="Visit the Solutions">variety of industries</a>. The concept of object storage is quite powerful, both from a user perspective and from an administrative one. We’ve discussed the <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/object-storage-cluster-status-palm-hand">simplicity of actually running</a> and <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/data-protection-active-data-recovery">maintaining our object storage</a> solution (one admin, multiple petabytes…that’s pretty sweet); however, today I’m going to tell you about what Caringo Swarm is like from a user perspective.
After all, a storage solution isn’t really much good if it’s tricky to get your data in or out. It’s perhaps even worse if you can’t find your data once you’ve put it in there. And what about protecting your data and limiting who can do what with it?
Thankfully, with Swarm’s Content Portal, we make all of these tasks easy.
<h4>Getting Data In and Out</h4>
Putting data into Swarm is as easy as drag-and-drop, and we support tagging your upload with custom metadata however you see fit for easier access in the future. Once your data is safely stored in Swarm, it can be accessed again at any time. And as always, data that you have uploaded via the Content Portal is equally accessible via S3, NFS, or any custom application you have talking to Swarm.
<h4>Finding Your Data</h4>
Navigating is as simple as clicking through your computer’s native file explorer. And, we take it one step further by supporting Collections. You can think of a Collection as a “smart folder,” similar to a bucket, that presents all of the data matching a set of criteria that you specify. We can even search based on the customized metadata you added on upload (<a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/power-metadata-object-storage">watch The Power of Metadata in Object Storage webinar recording</a>). Metadata allows you to organize your data any way that you like for easy access. Feel free to pat yourself on the back for adding those tags, you’ve earned it!
<h4>Guarding Your Data</h4>
Furthermore, once a user has logged in, that user can only see the tenants, domains, buckets and content that has been allowed. If you happen to be in charge of a bucket, domain, or tenant, setting up security policies is a snap with our policy wizard. You can even set usage quotas based on storage and bandwidth consumed.
All of this accessibility, searchability, and protection applies to data you’ve written into Swarm via S3, NFS (check out our Tech Tuesday <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/using-nfs-object-storage">Using NFS with Object Storage</a> webinar recording) or your custom applications. <a href="https://www.caringo.com/whitepapers/ending-storage-silos-next-generation-storage-unification">We don’t like silos</a> when it comes to data, and wouldn’t dream of locking your data into them.
Sign up for our next Tech Tuesday webinar on January 22 at 11am PT/2pm ET when John Bell and I will take an in-depth dive into the Swarm Content Portal, provide a live demonstration and answer your questions.
<a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/using-swarm-object-storage-content-portal-ui">Save My Seat</a>

A storage solution isn't really much good if it's tricky to get your data in or out. It's perhaps even worse if you can't find your data once you've put it in there. And what about protecting your data and limiting who can do what with it? Hear how Swarm Hassle-Free, Limitless Object Storage overcomes these challenges in this blog by Engineering Manager Brian Guetzlaff.

Content Distribution is a key capability for Media & Entertainment, Social Discovery and all sites that provide content to customers and end users.

Content Distribution

Metadata is "data about data" and can be descriptive, structural, administrative, reference or statistical metadata that is auto- or user-generated.

Metadata

NFS is a distributed network file system protocol. Caringo SwarmNFS lightweight file protocol converter seamlessly integrates files & object storage.

Data trapped in SAN, NAS and Tape Storage silos? Move your data into Swarm Object Storage to eliminate storage silos and create an active archive.

Storage Silos

Caringo Tech Tuesday webinars offer insight into Object Storage technology and how Swarm works, plus gives you access to our storage SMEs.

The Author

Brian Guetzlaff

Author Related Topics

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Data Protection & Active Data Recovery

Object Storage: We’ve Got Your Back, Part 1

Object Storage: We’ve Got Your Back, Part 2

World Backup Day & Data Protection, part 2

World Backup Day & Data Protection, part 1

Simplify Data Management with the Swarm Content Portal