Introduction

In the ever-evolving realm of business, SAP HANA stands as an indispensable cornerstone for myriad organizations, delivering potent database and data management capabilities. Ensuring the impregnability of your SAP HANA data through a regime of unwavering backups transcends mere good practice—it is a calculated strategic imperative.

The Necessity of Backup SAP HANA Data

Whether orchestrating On Premise SAP HANA systems or harnessing the dynamic potential of SAP HANA Cloud, the rationale behind data backup resonates profoundly:
1. Data Fortification and Rapid Recovery: The practice of regular backups provides a resilient safety net, ensuring the swiftest recovery from the depths of data loss, system glitches, or unexpected calamities. SAP HANA Cloud’s automated backups, attaining a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) as brisk as 15 minutes, adds an indispensable layer of data resilience.
2. Mitigation of Inherent Risks: Backups stand as the vanguard against potential menaces—ranging from data corruption and hardware hiccups to inadvertent deletions.
3. Conformance to Stringent Regulations: In a realm of stringent industry mandates, where data retention and shielded preservation are pivotal, regular backups stand as the sentinel ensuring compliance.
4. Adaptive Recovery Possibilities: SAP HANA backups offer a spectrum of adaptable data restoration timelines, aligning seamlessly with varying recovery requisites.
5. Sustaining Consistency and Wholeness: For denizens of the SAP HANA Cloud, automated backups perpetuate the most recent database integrity, guaranteeing data’s untarnished sanctity.
6. Mitigating Downtime Significantly: An adeptly executed backup strategy truncates downtime during system maintenance and unforeseen operational disruptions.
7. Synergy Across Hybrid Environments: Solutions synonymous with uniform data guardianship, spanning on-premises locales and cloud expanse, etch the epitome of uninterrupted operations.
8. Augmented Cloud Synthesis: Selective backup solutions offer the avant-garde capability of directly funneling backups to cloud terrains, elevating disaster recovery prospects.
9. Intrinsic Log and Data Backups: The SAP HANA Cloud landscape is marked by daily comprehensive data backups coupled with log data backups conducted at 15-minute intervals—a harmonious synergy for curbing data loss.
10. Economical and Uninterrupted Availability: SAP HANA Cloud’s inclusions encompass backup storage sans supplementary overheads, ensconcing data protection with an uninterrupted cadence.

Catalogic DPX: Your Solution for SAP HANA Backup

Catalogic DPX integrates with the SAP backint interfaces of SAP HANA to provide complete protection of the SAP HANA Data and Databases using native SAP HANA applications and tools.

Native Integration

SAP HANA administrators use SAP Tools every day to manage the databases and data protection as a critical part of these activities. Therefore, DPX has tightly integrated with the SAP native tools like SAP HANA Cockpit and Studio that Database administrators can easily start and schedule DPX SAP HANA Backups without having to access the DPX Management Console.

Point in time Recovery

DPX delivers point in time recovery of databases by levering the database andlog backups. By rolling forward logs on top of the backup data, DPX allows administrators to easily pick a specific point in time to recover the databases to. This allows our customers to pick up from where they left before the disaster struck.

Choose your destination – Disk, Tape, or Cloud

Disk, Tape or Cloud: DPX provides the ability to write SAP HANA backups to the destination of your choice: vStor (next generation storage agnostic backup repository built using modern open-source components and micro-services), Tape or the Cloud.

Highlights of Catalogic DPX for SAP HANA Backup:

• Seamless Integration: Catalogic DPX allows for a smooth integration with SAP HANA, letting you maintain existing backup strategies through SAP HANA Studio. DPX is also one of the “backint for SAP HANA”
• Optimal Performance: The use of Catalogic DPX minimizes impacts on performance, ensuring efficient backups without hindering system operations.
• Monitoring and Management: The Catalogic DPX Master Server UI serves as a centralized hub for monitoring backup or restoration endeavors, providing users with real-time insights.
• Hybrid Landscape Support: Catalogic DPX ensures uniform data protection across both on-premise and cloud setups, making it a versatile solution for varied organizational needs.
• Ease of Installation: The Catalogic DPX Plug-in for SAP HANA can be effortlessly installed and configured, ensuring a hassle-free setup process.

Emboldening SAP HANA Data Security

Securing your SAP HANA data is a top priority. Regularly backing up your data not only keeps it safe but also helps you meet regulatory requirements and ensures that your business operations can continue without data loss. Catalogic DPX provides seamless integration, vigilant monitoring, and unwavering support for your SAP HANA data protection. With SAP HANA at the forefront, Catalogic DPX steps up as your safeguard, keeping your precious data secure.

Ready to embark on the journey of reinforcing your SAP HANA data? Click here to request a Catalogic DPX demo or reach out to us with any questions. Your secure data’s protection is just a step away.

Introduction 

In today’s digital landscape, secure data protection is paramount for businesses. When considering data protection strategies, two key solutions come to the forefront: backup and High Availability (HA). While both play critical roles, understanding their pros and cons is essential for making informed decisions. In this article, we will explore the benefits of backup and HA, as well as their limitations, to help businesses prioritize their data protection needs effectively. 

Backup and HA are both crucial components of a comprehensive secure data protection strategy, although they serve different purposes and cater to different Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). 

Backup plays a vital role in secure data protection by creating copies of data and storing them separately from the primary system. It acts as a safety net, allowing businesses to restore data in the event of data loss, corruption, or system failures. Backups are typically performed at regular intervals, capturing the state of the data at a specific point in time. This makes them particularly useful for recovering from incidents that occurred in the past, such as accidental deletions or data corruption that may go unnoticed for some time. Backup solutions often offer features like data deduplication, encryption, and retention policies, ensuring data integrity and long-term storage.

Pros of Backup 

1. Data Recovery: Data protection solutions provide a reliable means to recover data in case of loss or corruption caused by hardware failure, accidental deletion, or malicious attacks. This ensures critical data can be restored, ensuring smooth business operations. 
2. Historical Data: Backups often retain multiple versions of data, enabling businesses to access previous states and restore specific versions when needed. This feature is valuable for recovering from errors, retrieving older data, or meeting compliance requirements. 
3. Cost-effectiveness: Implementing the solutions is generally more cost-effective compared to high availability systems, as they do not require redundant hardware. Businesses have the flexibility to choose backup strategies that align with their budget while ensuring data protection. 
4. Ransomware Detection and Warning (DPX-specific): DPX offers advanced features like GuardMode, providing real-time detection and warnings for ransomware attacks. This proactive defense mechanism adds an extra layer of security to backups, safeguarding against evolving cyber threats. 
5. Data Archiving: Backup solutions often include data archiving capabilities, allowing organizations to retain data for long-term storage or regulatory compliance purposes. Archiving ensures data integrity and accessibility over extended periods. 
6. Flexible Backup Media and Recovery Goals: Backup solutions offer the flexibility to utilize various media types, such as disk, tape, and cloud, enabling organizations to tailor their backup strategies to meet specific Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs). Disk backups allow for rapid recovery, making them ideal for critical data with strict RTOs. Tape offers cost-effective, long-term storage for data with more lenient recovery timelines, while cloud backups provide scalable and accessible off-site storage for enhanced disaster recovery. This adaptability ensures organizations can efficiently meet their operational and risk management needs, optimizing data recovery processes and maintaining business continuity with precision.

Cons of Backup 

1. Recovery Time: Restoring data from backups can take time, especially for large datasets. The recovery process may involve retrieving data from off-site locations or transferring it over a network, potentially leading to system downtime during the recovery period. 
2. Storage Space: Backups require significant storage space, especially when multiple versions of data are retained. Managing and scaling storage infrastructure to accommodate growing backup needs can be challenging and costly. 

High Availability, on the other hand, focuses on minimizing system downtime and ensuring continuous access to critical services. It involves deploying redundant systems, such as failover clusters or load-balanced servers, which are capable of taking over seamlessly in case of a primary system failure. High Availability solutions are designed to achieve near-zero downtime, allowing businesses to maintain continuous operations and minimize the impact of disruptions. They are typically built with redundancy, fault-tolerance, and failover mechanisms, ensuring that any system failure or maintenance activities can be handled without significant interruptions. 

Pros of High Availability 

1. Minimized Downtime: High availability systems are designed to minimize or eliminate downtime by quickly switching to a redundant system in case of primary system failure. This ensures continuous availability of critical services, reducing the impact of disruptions. 
2. Business Resilience: High availability systems contribute to overall business resilience by enabling seamless continuity of operations, even in the face of failures or disruptions. This resilience helps maintain customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and revenue streams. 
3. Scalability and Performance: High availability systems are often built on scalable architectures that can handle increasing workloads and user demands. They provide robust performance capabilities to support business growth and handle peak loads effectively. 

Cons of High Availability 

1. Cost: High availability systems can be costly to implement and maintain due to the requirement for redundant hardware and complex configurations. Investment in hardware, licensing, and specialized expertise may pose budgetary challenges for some businesses. 
2. Complexity: Setting up and managing high availability systems can be complex, requiring specialized knowledge and skills. Proper configuration, continuous monitoring, and proactive maintenance are necessary to ensure optimal system performance. 
3. Not a Substitute for Backup: While high availability systems protect against downtime, they do not replace the need for backup solutions. Data loss due to accidental deletion, corruption, or cyber-attacks can still occur, necessitating a comprehensive backup strategy. 
4. Limited Data Copies: High availability systems typically maintain a limited number of redundant data copies. If all the copies are compromised or subject to the same failure, there is still a risk of data loss. Backup solutions with multiple copies and off-site storage provide an additional layer of protection. 
5. Resource Utilization: High availability systems require additional hardware and resources to maintain redundancy, which can impact overall system performance. Organizations must carefully consider resource allocation and capacity planning to ensure smooth operations. 

Choice between Backup and HA

The choice between backup and High Availability(HA) depends on the specific RPO and RTO requirements of a business. RPO refers to the acceptable amount of data loss, while RTO represents the desired time it takes to recover from an incident. If a business has stringent RPO and RTO objectives, requiring minimal data loss and near-instantaneous recovery, a HA solution would be more suitable. HA systems offer rapid failover and continuous operations, ensuring minimal downtime and immediate access to services. 

However, for organizations with more flexible RPO and RTO requirements, backup solutions provide a cost-effective approach. Backups allow for more granular recovery options and the ability to restore data from various points in time, enabling businesses to recover from different types of incidents. Backup solutions are also advantageous for long-term data retention, compliance purposes, and safeguarding against scenarios where system-wide failures or simultaneous data corruption occur. 

Conclusion 

When it comes to secure data protection, businesses must evaluate the advantages and limitations of backup and HA solutions. Backup solutions offer data recovery, historical data retention, cost-effectiveness, ransomware detection (like DPX GuardMode), and data archiving. However, they may involve recovery time and require significant storage space. On the other hand, HA minimizes downtime, ensures business resilience, offers scalability and performance benefits. However, it can be costly, complex to manage, not a substitute for backups, maintain limited data copies, and require careful resource utilization. 

To create a comprehensive data protection strategy, businesses should consider integrating both backup and HA solutions, tailoring them to their specific needs and priorities. This approach ensures a multi-layered defense against both system failures and data loss, enabling business continuity, mitigating risks, and safeguarding valuable data assets. 

Catalogic DPX GuardMode, a new free capability announced in July 2022, provides early detection of ransomware. Combined with the comprehensive workload coverage of DPX and instant recoveries, backup and storage teams using DPX GuardMode will be among the best prepared to recover from a cyberattack. DPX GuardMode is complementary to endpoint and edge protection, monitoring file shares and file system behavior, even over the network, instead of relying on a specific binary fingerprint. GuardMode maintains, and regularly updates over 4000 known ransomware threat patterns, and assesses affected files. Backing up this extensive forensic layer of protection are honeypots as a deception layer to catch ever-evolving types of ransomware strains. GuardMode increases confidence in ransomware detection while identifying and enabling recovery of only the affected data.

GuardMode can:

• Proactively monitor file shares and file system behavior, even over the network.
• Notify backup and storage teams of suspicious activity and pinpoint the extent of potential damage caused by cyber incidents.
• Identify and enable recovery of only the affected data.

Watch this 3-minute demonstration to learn how DPX GuardMode works.

If you would like to learn more about DPX GuardMode, you can request a live demo or contact us.

Great work to all the System Administrators in the world! These hard working, dedicated men and women play a huge role in all our lives. From our desks to our home offices, they are the backbone of the technology that integrates into our daily routines. They jump in when needed and often necessary, will work 24-hour days and thru the weekend to troubleshoot outages, increase capacity, fight ransomware, or answer questions from us. One of their major responsibilities is to make sure they have a data protection insurance policy if data is lost, a final backstop to protect our business data, our system configurations, and our corporate histories.

We’d like to take the time now to show our appreciation to all System Administrators, from our team to yours!

For Catalogic Software, we would like to thank our IT Manager, Dawuan Myers, for continuous help on all ends of our business. Please check out Dawuan’s Q&A and learn from his experiences:

Dawuan Myers – Q&A

1. What keeps you up at night?
   Not what many will say. Being part of a backup company where I know I have robust recovery processes and products allows me to sleep pretty well at night.

   These days, my nightmares often have to do with waking up to a $100k cloud bill from a runaway workload or a code change deployment. It has happened once before and hopefully never again!

2. What do you see as the biggest emerging threat?
   People taking advantage of your weaknesses is a profession. Recent Ransomware and cybersecurity trends are maddening, and it’s hard to fathom that there is an industry built to make your life miserable. The thought of going through a major attack over a long weekend when I am looking forward to spending time with family is just sickening to me.
3. What would be your advice to management to make a sysadmin’s job easier?
   Our management team has been great and incredibly supportive. They allow us to keep our systems up to date with patches which helps us fight any known cyber threats before reaching our network. If I had to give any advice; it would be to continue to be supportive and patch your systems.
4. What would be your request to your users that would make your job easier?
   Be safe and continue to communicate.

   With all that is going on with malware and ransomware threats, I always advise our users to take a safe approach and communicate anything that looks suspicious. Being proactive is always better than being reactive.

5. What would you want to do more of? Or learn more of?

   The Linux OS is something I would like to continue to learn more about. Coming into Catalogic Software 7 years ago with a Windows OS background, I needed to learn Linux OS and commands quickly. We do have a mixed environment, however a lot of what we do is based around Linux. I would like to take the next step up from being an Intermediate Linux administrator.

6. We know you just got promoted to be an IT Manager. Congratulations! What are you most looking forward to, in your new role?
   Thanks! I look forward to continuing to improve our network and help support and manage the cloud infrastructure costs for CloudCasa, our new cloud native, Kubernetes backup-as-a-service.