The Long and Short of Data Backup

Having a comprehensive data backup and recovery strategy in place can absolutely save your business. This means it’s extremely important. Unfortunately, too many businesses don’t consider their backup and recovery systems until it is too late. Let’s unwrap what makes a successful backup and recovery platform work, and how to get one for your business.

Many business professionals use data backup and disaster recovery as if they are interchangeable, but this is simply not the case. Data backup is the act of making copies of your data while disaster recovery is a process that includes the act of actually restoring the data using the data backup. Obviously, the two systems are related (as one can’t happen without the other), and today we’ll take a look at why they are both integral to the continuity of a business.

Data Backup

When you first implement your backup solution, you should be focused on which data (and how much of it) you want to back up. It’s important to remember that not all data is as important as other data and therefore it is critical that you think about what data will be necessary to keep your organization functional if and when you experience operational troubles. As a rule, you should try to back up as much as you can without it affecting your ability to restore later on. The ideal data backup process will happen automatically without any resource dedicated to running it, as user error has sunk more than a few businesses in need of a data backup.

Disaster Recovery

On a related note, disaster recovery deals with the process of restoring your data following a disaster. The main way of measuring effectiveness of disaster recovery is speed. How fast can you get back into a comparable situation where you’re not operating at a loss? You should also consider where you’re trying to restore from. Best practices dictate that you have at least three copies of your data with one stored in the cloud, and two stored on-site for ease of access. Furthermore, you need to consider running automated tests to ensure the disaster recovery process will work the way you want it to when you need it most.

Does your business need a hand with implementing data backup and disaster recovery? Our all-in-one Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution can provide you with a powerful preventative solution to ensure your organization doesn’t fall to unexpected disasters. To learn more, give our IT experts a call today at 607.433.2200.