How to Best Take Advantage of Data Backup

Some organizations want to better understand the process that they use to take backups of their data and restore them in the event of an emergency. This is great, because the value of being able to do so cannot (and should not) be understated. A proper data backup and disaster recovery system could be all that stands between prosperity and failure.

Let’s consider a hypothetical disaster scenario. Your office is struck by a fire due to some sort of unforeseen circumstance. Maybe an outlet is overloaded and stray sparks start a small fire, which quickly evolves into a raging inferno. You evacuate your building, so all of your employees are safe and sound, but can the same be said for your technology? Even if the fire is quickly contained, if your networking equipment or server is damaged, you are looking at a major downtime event--especially if you don’t have data backup.

The same can be said for any sort of natural disaster. Floods, hurricanes, and lightning can all cause irreparable damage to your infrastructure, and unless you’re very careful with how you manage your data, you could lose everything that you’ve worked so hard to retain over the years. What is the best way to make sure that your organization survives not just ordinary circumstances, like hardware failure, but extraordinary ones like the aforementioned natural disasters?

The key is in your data backup and disaster recovery plan. Some small businesses might already have one put into place, but it’s likely that they aren’t up to par with the current needs of enterprise-level backup systems. Magnetic tape backup--the long-standing industry standard--has plenty of flaws which make it unappealing. For one, they can only be taken at the end of the day, or during a time when office is closed. The reason for this is that they are particularly resource-intensive, and taking them during the workday would have a negative effect on your ability to conduct business. Furthermore, since tape backups are only taken at the end of the day, you’ll be losing an entire day’s worth of data in the event of a disaster. Consumer-grade USB hard drives aren’t a good fit either, because they can easily be lost, stolen, or ignored, and your backup is only as good as its relevance.

That’s not even mentioning what would happen if you stored your tape backups on-site. A fire isn’t discriminatory in regards to what it destroys. It will devour both employee workstations and tape backups alike if given the opportunity. Furthermore, a hacking attack on your infrastructure could render any digitally-stored backups useless due to corruption or theft. Therefore, the most logical way to handle this issue is to simply store your data backups off-site. But how can you rapidly restore your backups following a disaster if they are nowhere near your site of operations?

A solution that puts an end to all of these woes is a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution from Directive. BDR takes smaller backups as often as every 15 minutes to ensure that data loss is minimal, and it accomplishes this by taking backups of only files that have changed since the last backup was taken. This puts less strain on your infrastructure and protects your business’ continuity. Furthermore, you eliminate the risk of user error, since BDR takes these backups automatically without the need for someone to set the tape at the end of the day. Last but not least, your BDR stores your backups in secure, offsite data centers, as well as in the cloud, so that you can rapidly recover in the event of a disaster. Plus, since the BDR device itself can replicate your server, you don’t have to worry about replacement hardware as quickly, meaning that you can get right back to work with minimal downtime. It’s just one way that enterprise-level technology solutions can help your small or medium-sized business thrive.

To get started with BDR today, reach out to Directive at 607.433.2200.