Planning Your Storage Environment › Preliminary Tasks

Preliminary Tasks

Protecting your data and managing your backup storage is fundamentally a policy issue rather than a technical problem. Technology can implement policy, but it cannot tell you what your policy should be.

Before you can use CA ARCserve Backup software effectively, you need to analyze your organization's data storage requirements. You need to do the following:

• Understand how your organization's data resources are used.
• Understand how security and availability at any given time can affect your corporation's bottom line.
• Develop a comprehensive, high-level storage plan before you purchase additional hardware or configure CA ARCserve Backup.

After you have a clear idea of your storage needs, this chapter can help you to develop a comprehensive implementation plan that allows for:

• Fast recovery of user-deleted files and directories, and database-related data.
• Centralized, single-point backup administration for networked systems.
• Backup operations that do not interfere significantly with normal business operations.
• Adequate quantities of media and adequate numbers of devices for your needs.
• Full recovery from catastrophic data loss.