Multi-Location Data Backup Solutions

Solution Background

In the increasingly complex international environment today, technological self-reliance has become a strategic high ground that countries are competing to ascend. Since 2022, the global digital transformation process has significantly accelerated, entering the express lane of comprehensive development. This urgently requires deepening the comprehensive innovation of enterprise architecture and accelerating the construction of a nationally controlled and self-reliant system. This process places more stringent standards on the reliability, stability, and efficient management of IT infrastructures. It not only demands immediate action on unified backup and upgrade of infrastructure data but also emphasizes enhancing the resilience of non-dependent innovative architectures. At the same time, it sets higher goals for rapid iteration and transformation of existing environments.

In light of this, the industry urgently needs to benchmark with the world's top backup management products and technologies, deeply integrate the strategy of independent innovation, and jointly develop a software platform that can meet the needs of large-scale system backup management in the industry. This platform aims to achieve a significant leap in technology, implementing unified and efficient backup management for unstructured data, structured data, diverse operating systems, and databases, thereby comprehensively ensuring data security and recoverability and freeing the industry from single-source supply dependencies on backup products.

Solution Design

Backup Archetecture

System Components

Backup Workflow

Backup Data Lifecycle Management

This solution provides Web graphical backup management based on the B/S architecture.

It supports various backup objects such as files, databases, big data, entire machines, and virtualization.

It supports various storage media such as disk storage, tape libraries, S3 object storage, etc.

Console Server:

Provides management console services, manages client resources, storage, backup rules, etc., within a single backup domain, and offers backup policies, backup set management, task monitoring, alert messages, report statistics, etc.

Schedule Server:

Receives instructions from the console and is responsible for unified scheduling of tasks such as backup, recovery, backup set replication or archiving, data cleanup, tape operations, and backup set management.

Backup Server:

Connects to storage media devices, receives backup data from clients, saves it to backup storage media, and restores data to clients.

Client:

Runs client programs, reads data from user production systems, and sends it to the backup server.

Monitor Center:

Provides management console services for multiple backup domains, collects resources, rules, tasks, etc., from each backup domain, and provides reports and statistical displays.

For business production data backups, backup data can be stored in multiple copies across multiple locations and centers, with each copy having an independent expiration date. Data is classified and stored based on its importance and retention period. Long-term data can be archived to offline storage such as tape libraries, while short-term and frequently used data can be stored in SAN storage. Additionally, data compression and deduplication can be used to reduce disk space usage. Data lifecycle management is a management strategy that covers the entire process from data creation to deletion, including data classification, backup, migration, and destruction. In the backup system, the practice of data lifecycle management involves effectively managing data to ensure its availability, integrity, and security.

Data Classification

Classify data based on its importance, sensitivity, and usage frequency. This helps determine the level of protection and backup frequency required for different datasets.

Backup Planning

Develop backup plans suitable for different data types, such as full backups, incremental backups, differential backups, and backup frequencies. These strategies should consider data retention periods, Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

Storage Media Selection

Choose appropriate data storage media and architectures, including local storage, cloud storage, and archival storage. Storage strategies should consider cost-effectiveness, access speed, data durability, and compliance requirements.

Data Protection and Security

Implement security measures such as data encryption, backup data verification, access control, and transmission encryption to prevent data breaches, tampering, or loss.

Data Migration Strategy

In addition to local storage, data should be stored in multiple locations to form a multi-copy mechanism ensuring data recoverability. Separate retention periods should be set for each copy to prevent the simultaneous expiration and deletion of backup data.

Data Destruction Policy

Safely destroy data when it is no longer needed, following established policies and procedures, to ensure no potential risks to the organization.

Maintain records of data processing, backup, and destruction operations for auditing and compliance checks.

Solution Advantages

Flexible Backup and Recovery Methods

Data backup supports full backup, incremental backup, log backup, and other methods for different data sources; customizable backup period strategies, retention cycle counts, and cycle management. Data recovery supports source machine restoration, restoration to a different machine; fine-grained restoration, and restore to any point in time based on database logs.

Support for Backup and Recovery of Common Data Sources

Supports the backup and recovery of file systems and object storage files; supports database backup and recovery based on interface levels, such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and other foreign databases, as well as domestic databases like Dameng and GaussDB, and big data Hadoop backup and recovery; ensures the consistency and integrity of backup data.

Support for Common Backup Storage Media

Data can be backed up to various backup target storage media such as file systems, block storage, object storage, and tape libraries, all created uniformly through storage units.

Backup Data Lifecycle Management

Backup set data supports immediate expiration or extension of retention periods; supports replication between different storage media and archiving based on retention cycles for tiered storage; supports direct restoration from these backup storage media to clients or transferring backup data.

Unified Management via Graphical Interface

Intelligent installation wizards, flexible backup strategies; rich statistical information for easy viewing of backup results; supports custom alert settings with email notifications for anomalies; supports automatic verification to check the recoverability and integrity of backup data; supports user permission management functions. Only one console is needed for centralized management of different databases.

Application Scenarios

Data Backup and Offsite Disaster Recovery

Users may have multiple business servers in their local data centers, and they can centrally back up production data to a single backup server. In the event of a failure on the production host, data restoration can be performed.

When users have offsite disaster recovery data centers and the network between the local and offsite data centers is connected, production data can be backed up to the backup server in the same-city disaster recovery data center or the offsite disaster recovery data center through a dedicated line. In the case of an irrecoverable disaster affecting the entire production data center or the same-city data center, data restoration can be performed from the backup storage in the offsite data center to complete business reconstruction.

Supporting multiple concurrencies and providing flexible backup methods, it can effectively protect more than 30 operating systems, over 10 databases, more than 5 big data platforms, more than 10 virtualization platforms, as well as various virtual machine platform whole-machine backups.

Adopting a unified backup storage architecture, it can connect to multiple storage media and efficiently support backups of various data sources.

Backup sets support multi-copy management and backup set replication between different storage media, enabling backup data to be placed under offsite disaster recovery protection.

Long-term Data Archiving

Customer Case Study

Case Name: ICBC Multi-Center Backup Project

Case Description

Management consoles are deployed in each of ICBC's three data centers, forming independent backup domains for each.

Backup set data between each backup domain is periodically backed up to the backup storage or exchanged through backup set replication, enabling multi-copy management and retention.

The console management platforms of each backup domain are unified and connected to the monitoring domain, enabling unified monitoring of backup task data across the bank.

Case Value

1) Assisted financial clients in achieving localization transformation of their backup systems.

2) Backup set data from multiple data centers is saved to tape libraries, satisfying data security and compliance requirements.