Source: Own illustration
In an increasingly digitalized world where we create, exchange and store countless pieces of information every day, the topic of data backup is becoming more and more important. We all depend on our data, whether at work, in education or in our private lives. But this valuable information can be lost quickly, for example, due to technical failures, cyberattacks or even human error. The number of incidents in which companies and private individuals suffer data loss is increasing every year. An effective data protection strategy is therefore more important than ever before.
One for All – All for One
We at the IT Center are also intensively involved with the topic of data backup, and we are not the only ones. In view of the question of how large volumes of data from research and teaching can be backed up in the future, the Datensicherung.NRW project was launched. This project aims to establish a cross-university, state-wide, sustainable, and up-to-date storage infrastructure. In total, 29 NRW universities, including RWTH Aachen University, are involved in this project.
What Does That Mean in Concrete Terms?
A key part of the preliminary project was the development of new concepts and the acquisition of the infrastructure for the state-wide service. This includes, among other things, the appropriate software. Thus, in the course of this project, RWTH Aachen University and the other participating universities in NRW switched to a uniform backup software solution from Commvault — an expert in data backup and recovery.
In addition to equipping all the universities involved in the project with this software, the establishment of this backup service also includes setting up their own data backup centers. Equipped with powerful and modern hardware architecture and software, the service centers cover the multi-layered requirements of the NRW universities for data backup in times of advancing digitization.
Not only the service itself, but also the associated support takes place across locations. The universities can thus use data backup as a service and rely on the expertise and infrastructure of the offering data centers.
Time and Resource Savings Through Incremental Backup
Once a system has been fully backed up, generally only incremental backups are performed. This means that with each backup, only the changes and additions that have been made since the last backup are backed up. This results in both time and resource savings, since the entire system does not have to be backed up again with each backup. Restoring data can also be faster, as only the affected data blocks can be restored.
World Backup Day on March 31, 2023
On the occasion of today’s “World Backup Day“, we would like to encourage you to perform at least one backup on your devices today. Let’s take the first step together to fight data loss on our smartphones and computers and advance the protection and security of our data. 🙂
Responsible for the content of this article is Stéphanie Bauens.
