Data security risks and Open-E JovianDSS countermeasures

Nowadays, it’s all about the data. Continuous and uninterrupted data availability is a must for all businesses. Unfortunately, there will always be a risk of sudden accidents that can make day company data vulnerable. This, in turn, leads to huge money loss and the danger that critical company data will be exposed to an unauthorized audience. Additionally, theft, natural disasters, system failures, power outages, and many more can have impact on every company as literally, everyone is a target. Companies which don’t have a solid disaster recovery plan, plus tools that prevent data loss or help in retrieving the lost data, can face troubles that will be very difficult to get out of.

Open-E JovianDSS is a storage software that can be a reliable element of your business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Open-E JovianDSS provides you with peace of mind and time to do what you are really good at – running your business. What types of risks companies deal with and how Open-E JovianDSS can help them?

Risk	Open-E JovianDSS Solutions
Virus attack	Snapshots
A virus or ransomware can delete or encrypt your data thus making it unusable.	With frequently created snapshots, you can precisely pinpoint the most recent copy of data that are not infected and, as a result, minimize the downtime and loss of valuable information.
Data corruption	Self-healing
Even the best, enterprise-grade HDDs and SSDs can develop small errors in data stored on them that – when untreated – can lead to major data corruption issues in longer time.	ZFS built-in data self-healing mechanisms constantly check the integrity of data and correct any mistakes at early stages where there are enough checksums data available to avoid any data loss.
Disk failure	RAID
All disks can fail, even the most robust enterprise-grade drives. Once there is a failure of the whole drive, extracting data from them is a very expensive and time-consuming process usually requiring sending the physical device to specialized data recovery companies. Costs could be as high as $1000 per gigabyte, making recovery of modern large drives economically unjustifiable.	ZFS has built-in hardware-independent redundancy mechanism similar to RAID that makes possible creating storage entities (disk groups within pools) that allow one or even more drives to suffer complete failure while keeping the data safe and providing uninterrupted access. Failed drives can be replaced without any interruptions to restore the highest possible data security protection.
Rebuild failure	Additional RAID
While replacing a failed drive, the errors which can stop the process can occur causing the whole process to be reinitiated.	RAID-like disk groups: 3- or more way mirrors, RAIDZ-2 and RAIDZ-3 allow more than one drives to fail at any single point in time.
System failure	Backup server
Sometimes the whole system might fail and not be operating at all, e.g. motherboard or CPU failure.	Backup server keeps copies of all data from the main production server and when necessary, it can use them to recreate the original production data.
Downtime	High Availability
During typical lifecycle of data storage servers there might be several occasions when the system will have to be shut down for a brief period of time: software and hardware upgrades, changing or rearranging physical locations of the servers etc.	High Availability cluster connects two servers and allow them to – under typical circumstances – combine their both computational power to provide better day-to-day performance and when one of the machines is down, to make the other take all of its duties.
Natural Disaster	Remote server
Natural disasters like fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes etc. are hard (if possible at all) to predict and can make local servers down for days, weeks or even longer.	Remote backup server that runs full version of data storageOS can take over the duties of main production server for prolonged periods of time and, therefore, maintain continuity of operations for the whole time of rebuilding the primary location from the disaster. Once hardware at the primary location is operational again, this server is also used to send the data back.
Theft	Remote server
Advanced data storage servers are expensive equipment that can be either sold as a whole or (more often) in parts on the black market. This make them an attractive target for thefts and robberies.	Similarly as with the case of natural disaster, a fully-featured remote backup server can take over the duties while the original server is either being recovered or replaced by a new unit.
Human error	Remote server
Last but not least – poorly trained, lousy or ill-intentioned administrator can do a lot of damage to your data, including deleting them completely.	Remote backup server is able to temporarily take over the duties of the main production server.

Closing Notes

The final conclusion that should be drawn is to be careful and stay always a step ahead when it comes to data protection strategy. Keeping the company safe and able to recover its assets in case of problems, is the best way to prevent the emergency. Open-E JovianDSS can help to defend your business from natural disasters and system failures, and we all know – accidents happen to everyone. Don’t let them to hit your business by surprise.

Read more about Open-E JovianDSS on the Open-E Website >>