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Essential hyper-converged backup, data protection questions to ask
Procure a hyper-converged infrastructure, and you'll need to protect the data residing in that environment. Ask and answer these questions to determine the best HCI backup approach for your organization.
Once you procure a hyper-converged infrastructure, you must protect the data that resides in that environment. Some hyper-converged products include built-in data protection, but that may not be sufficient for all your hyper-converged backup and data protection needs.
The data protection direction you choose will depend on what your chosen hyper-converged platform can do as well as what else your organization operates. For example, if you've replaced everything in your data center with HCI and your selected vendor includes data protection, that may be sufficient for your needs. You need to ensure the system is covered in the following areas:
- The HCI includes all of the capabilities you need for data protection.
- Its hyper-converged backup features enable you to comply with your organization's backup policies.
- It provides disaster recovery features, and you don't need to buy something separate for that.
If you're not all-in with hyper-convergence, the data protection equation becomes even trickier. Sure, you can opt to use the HCI's built-in hyper-converged backup and data protection for workloads operating in that environment and something completely separate for the rest of your infrastructure, but that's often not a palatable choice. You want consistency in your environment when it comes to data protection.
In that case, it may be better to use third-party data protection and extend it to your hyper-converged environment. Whether you can take this approach, however, depends on the hyper-converged platform you've selected. For example, if you chose a HCI that uses a less-than-mainstream hypervisor, your choices around data protection will likely be limited.
Critical hyper-converged backup questions
To make the best hyper-converged backup and data protection decision for your HCI environment, ask these critical questions while assessing your data protection needs.
Does my data protection support my new hyperconverged infrastructure? Decide whether you can use your data protection for your hyper-converged infrastructure environment. If no, identify data protection that will work. If yes, extend your current data protection footprint to encompass your HCI environment
Does my selected HCI platform include data protection features? Determine if the features are sufficient to meet your needs. If yes, use this capability for hyper-conveged backup and data protection. If no, identify a third-party data protection product that will support your HCI environment.
What am I covering? Is it just your hyper-converged environment? Or are you protecting additional infrastructure elements as well? If you're covering both the HCI environment and rest of your infrastructure, make sure to choose third-party data protection that supports it all. If you're covering just the HCI environment, go back to question two.
