Signal Encoding Unit Structure
Signal Encoding Unit Structure
ቀን 14/08/2016
አ/አ
SIGNAL ENCODING
Unit Structure
8.0 Objectives
8.2 Synchronization
8.4.1. Modulation
8.4.2.1.1 AM
8.4.2.1.2 FM
8.4.2.1.3 PM
signal conversion)
8.4.2.2.1 ASK
8.4.2.2.2 FSK
8.4.2.2.3 PSK
8.4.2.2.4 QAM
8.4.2.3.1 PAM
8.4.2.3.2 PCM
8.4.2.3.3 PWM
ቀን 18/10/16
ሌ/ኮ
ወንዳለ ካሳ
Adam Marget
Much has already been written about data and its significance in the current
digital economy. Data remains one of the most valuable assets for a business
today since losing it can render irreversible damage in terms of productivity,
revenue, reputation, and customer loyalty and satisfaction. That’s why keeping
it protected and consistently available has become the core goal of every
business. After all, it will be naive to rely on chance and wait until a
considerable data loss occurs to take protective measures.
This is where a robust data backup and recovery plan can come in to save the
day. It can help you create strong copies of your business information, which
can be recovered in the event of data loss. A solid backup and recovery plan can
help you survive, or even thrive, in the face of such unexpected events.
It is imperative to acknowledge that any server can crash, anyone can make
errors and a cyberattack can occur at any time. The primary goal of backup and
recovery is to protect data, such as files, folders and databases, from such
threats and ensure data restoration. In the case of a primary data failure due to
hardware/software failure, data corruption, external threats or accidental
deletion, backup copies will allow the restoration of the data from an earlier
point in time to aid the business in recovering from the unexpected event.
An organization can opt for different backup and recovery models in its
infrastructure strategy. For instance, you can back up your on-premises and
cloud data in either on-premises data centers or the cloud. Similarly, to
minimize the amount of data lost between two backups, backup jobs may
leverage different strategies (i.e., incremental forever) to take backups and
synthesize backup copies more consistently. Backup data specifications, roles
and responsibilities, and schedule and frequency should also be determined for
an effective backup and recovery plan.
Reliable backup and swift recovery processes together ensure business reliance
and form a pivotal part of a robust business continuity and disaster recovery
(BCDR) plan.
Crafting a backup and recovery strategy doesn’t end once you’ve established a
method for taking backups. Backup and recovery management involves a whole
range of functions, like planning and testing responses to different types of data
losses, configuring the environment for backup and recovery, setting up a
schedule for backup, complete monitoring of the environment, troubleshooting
issues and restoring data when the need arises. Clear roles and responsibilities
must be assigned to ensure the corresponding team intervenes appropriately.
Backup data
You should back up any data that you have to protect. All the necessary data for
your server workloads, like documents, configuration files, media files,
operating systems and registry files, must be backed up to ensure they stay
available in the event of data loss or downtime.
Backup schedule
Having a definite and regular schedule for backing up your data is essential.
Ideally, the frequency between your backups shouldn’t exceed the time you are
willing to spend on any rework due to the lost data. If you back up your data
only once a year, you will lose all the data between those backups in the case of
an outage. The best practice is thus to back up the data at regular intervals.
Also, it would be best to consider the impact running backups will have on
production workloads. It is better to create a schedule that doesn’t risk
interfering with your business hours, such as running regular backups outside
working hours.
Backup technique
At its core, backups can be classified into three groups depending on the storage
medium.
Software: Backup software is also a type of local backup that will help you
copy your files, folders, applications and operating system on external
hardware. While the software is sometimes integrated with the hardware, it can
also run separately. Tape was the most commonly used hardware in such
backups until the emergence of disk-based hardware in the early 2000s. While
software-based backup solutions are scalable, they rely upon the flexibility and
scalability of the local hardware. Associated servers, storage devices and
storage media (i.e., removable HDDs) must be managed and maintained by the
organization in the long run.
Cloud: Cloud backup, also called online backup, backs up your data and sends
it over a proprietary or public network to a remote server. Cloud-based backup
has been soaring in popularity recently thanks to its flexibility and scalability.
Unlike the on-site backup options, cloud backup does not have the hefty data
center footprint and maintenance costs. These services are available over the
WAN and can often be accessed from anywhere remotely. However, cloud
backups can face security and latency issues if not appropriately managed.
Nevertheless, cloud backup has become an indispensable part of the backup and
recovery strategies of modern organizations.
Backup type
You can dictate the strategy by which you create backups by utilizing one or
several of the following backup methods:
Full: The full backup takes a complete copy of all the data on a particular host
or a set of hosts. Full backup creates a backup for all information you wish to
secure, including files and folders, hard drives/in-use disk regions, operating
systems, system metadata, application data and more. The more recently a full
backup has been executed, the easier it gets to restore data during a data loss
event. However, since everything is backed up in one go, it takes longer to back
up data than the other backups.
Differential: In this case, not all the data is copied except for the altered,
created or updated information since the last full backup. Simply put, after an
initial full backup, subsequent differential backups are performed to back up all
the changes that have happened to the data since then. While differential backup
is much faster and takes less space than full backups, too many differential
backups being performed between full backups risk differential backups
growing larger in size than the original full backup.
Incremental: The incremental backup only stores data that has changed since
the last backup, whether full, differential or incremental. The major advantage
of incremental backup is that it takes the least time to complete and uses storage
space effectively. However, data restoration can be time-consuming if the chain
of incremental backups isn’t efficiently managed since data must be compiled
together from various backups.
Backup storage
Backup procedures
Recovery objectives
For an efficient backup and recovery strategy, an organization must first define
its two critical recovery objectives: recovery point objective and recovery time
objective.
Recovery point objective (RPO): The RPO defines the maximum amount of
data an organization can stand to lose following a data breach or outage. Let’s
say the last available data backup for a business following a data loss is from 20
hours ago. If the RPO for the business is 24 hours, then the data loss is still
tolerable according to the organization’s business continuity plan.
Recovery time objective (RTO): The RTO defines the maximum period an
organization sets before it restores normal operations in the case of a data loss
or outage. In other words, RTO is an organization’s time to recover after being
notified of a business disruption.
Recovery type
There are different types of recovery for different types of data. Let’s have a
look at a few of them.
Virtual machine disk recovery: This process restores all data and applications
on a virtual machine, such as a VMware VMDK, to the original VM host or an
alternate host.
Bare metal recovery (BMR): This process enables users to restore data from
file- or image-level backups to a physical server or virtual machine target. BMR
enables the recovery of backups onto dissimilar hardware.
Instant recovery: This process enables rapid recovery of virtual machines (i.e.,
VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V) by utilizing the backup appliance as a
temporary datastore. This enables the appliance to quickly inject data into a
mounted share rather than rebuilding it on the target datastore. Once the VM is
booted, the location of the virtual disk is migrated off the appliance as a passive
background operation.
Recovery procedures
Recovery procedures are established to reliably and swiftly restore the data
backups. Recovery procedures have to dictate the whole process, from
determining the date and time of lost data to evaluating the integrity of restored
data.
Testing and review process
Testing and review are critical to the complete BCDR plan. The testing and
review process assesses the effectiveness of an organization’s backup and
recovery procedures and its ability to restore data when needed. Insufficient
testing and review leave the business vulnerable to data loss and downtime.
Notably, today, it’s not a matter of “if” but rather “when?” a data breach would
occur. According to Statista, the annual share of ransomware attacks
experienced by organizations worldwide has been on the rise since 2018,
peaking at a whopping 71% in 2022. Amid such an ever-burgeoning threat
landscape, a robust data backup and recovery strategy will keep your business
afloat, no matter what data threats you encounter.
There are many reasons why an organization must invest in its data backup and
recovery strategy.
Data security and integrity: Data is essentially the lifeblood of organizations
today and protecting it will invariably help a business survive — and even
thrive — in the new normal. It helps you secure your data from a wide range of
data threats and aids you in staying compliant with the various industry
standards and regulations.
Peace of mind: What’s more compelling than the peace of mind a reliable
backup and recovery strategy offers you? Knowing that your business-critical
data is safe and secure from the reach of bad guys will help you maintain IT
peace of mind all the time, enabling you to focus on other important business-
oriented tasks.
Backup and recovery with Unitrends
With the ongoing transition to a hybrid work culture and the increasing advent
of remote and cloud workloads, cloud backup has become a priority for
organizations. Its flexibility, cost-effectiveness and ease to use makes it an ideal
choice for enterprises, especially when the organizational data footprint is
expanding rapidly. However, don’t put all your eggs (i.e., backups) in one
basket. What if your internet connectivity fails when you try to access an online
backup? Since the cloud relies on internet connectivity, it will drastically affect
your RTO. That’s why it is advisable to leverage the combination of online and
on-site backups. When they are combined, you get an unprecedented level of
accessibility and security.
Unitrends provides you with a one-stop shop for all your backup and recovery
needs, both on-site and online, enabling you to comprehensively protect your
data wherever it resides.
Sized from 2TB to 120TB, you can get a Unitrends backup appliance that fits
your needs and budget. As your business grows, you can easily scale up, out or
to the cloud. Get started now and learn more about the powerful capabilities of
Unitrends’ enterprise backup and continuity solutions.