You can’t have a disaster recovery plan until you first have a good backup solution. Is your backup solution good—or just good enough?
The traditional backup process is done to tape – which has a number of limitations including high cost (particularly as capacity increases), difficult upgrades, degradation over time, and slow backup and restoration.
Over the past three to five years, there has been a transition to hard-disk-based backup solutions that generally offer the ability to easily increase capacity as well as backup and restore much faster.
Whichever solution you use, there are many risks to your data.
Traditional backup processes capture only one snapshot of your information per day. So if your backup is scheduled to take place at 12 a.m., you risk losing the entire following day’s work in the case of a disaster.
The backup process traditionally involves significant manual labor. Someone has to ensure that the correct media is in the drive. Someone has to look at the results of the backup to ensure that it is complete (and ideally perform periodic data restorations). Then, when the backup is complete, someone has to take it offsite for safekeeping.
While some businesses have the capabilities to perform all of these backup-related tasks, many others don’t—and therefore have no idea if their backups will be there when needed.
How can you make your backup system better?
- First, you should be absolutely sure that every bit of your data is backed up multiple times per day.
- Second, the human element should be completely eliminated from the equation.
- Third, restoration should be quick and flexible, so you can bring back any part of your data or all of it, depending on your needs.
- Finally, the impact on your business should be minimal. In fact, you should be unaware that a backup is even in progress.
We can help you set up and maintain a backup solution perfect for your needs. Contact us for more information.