As soon as you decide to set up a data backup and recovery strategy in your company, data management issues can surface. Backup is a space-consuming endeavor even for VMs powered by Hyper-V, and as a result of several months or years of backing up essential corporate data, you can end up with a bulk of redundant, duplicate files. Thus, once the time for Hyper-V recovery comes in case of an update, failure, or any other situation, you need to ensure that all essential files survived, quickly finding the required data upon retrieval.
Thus, before setting up your Hyper-V environment, you need to plan for data optimization so that it’s stored compactly and doesn’t accumulate to drown you in the end.
This article introduces the most common data optimization methods in the backup. Look through them and pick the one you find the most suitable for your individual data needs.
Compression
Data of any kind is voluminous. Thus, to store it efficiently, various data backup providers ensure that the files are adequately compressed in the storage. The compression function comes with tape drive hardware, but cloud data backup providers may not include this option as a default choice. Thus, to have your data stored compactly and let it consume less precious space, make sure to check for the compression option with your backup provider.
Deduplication
This option is also a common choice among those who wish to have their data backups consume less space, thus saving the storage space costs. The deduplication technique divides data into meaningful chunks and compares the ones sent for backup to the ones already contained in the backup copy. Once the system detects identical chunks, it doesn’t send the clone to the backup storage, copying only the recently changed data or emerged in the system. In this way, you receive higher bandwidth capacity, quicker reserve copying, and more optimal space use without numerous duplicates of the same data.
Automated Data Pruning
Data pruning, or grooming, denotes automated data optimization techniques aimed at removing the old, outdated data from the backup copy to save the functional space for more valuable information. The backup provider may either have this option as a built-in feature, stipulating the period after which data is deemed outdated and permanently deleted from the system. Otherwise, you can customize the data grooming preferences and set the timeframe for storage, types of files, and receipt of notifications before data removal, not to lose some vital data.
Refactoring
Data backups from multiple computers may be challenging to manage. For instance, if your company uses one tape to back up the files from numerous computers every day, restoring one device that collapsed may require compiling the bits of data from its system from multiple tapes, which is tedious and time-consuming. As a result, the downtime may increase dramatically, reducing the backup efficiency and betraying its purpose. A solution to such a problem is to employ refactoring – a quick reconfiguration of data backups achieved with the consolidation of device-specific backups on one tape. This optimization approach works well for the systems employing incremental backups.
Data Encryption
Encryption can serve various purposes, one of which is to condense and protect data during storage. Depending on the encryption method, data may take more or less space than its original copy. Thus, if you pursue two aims with your data backups – having a reserve copy for business continuity and arranging secure storage – then encryption is your choice. However, keep in mind that encryption slows down the CPU processes as it’s a resource-intensive process. Thus, you may need to schedule backups and critical business operations for different times of the day to make the system run optimally.
Why Bother?
Overall, as you can see, Hyper-V data optimization can be achieved in several ways. The purpose of optimizing your data is to store it in a smaller storage space, which may not be a problem at first, but with time, as your data accumulates, it may turn into a real challenge. Hence, it’s better to take care of data optimization early at the start of data backup efforts.