What is Backup and Disaster Recovery?
Every piece of computer data is at risk in some way. Hardware fails, inevitably, for many reasons. When that happens, data is gone. Backup and disaster recovery planning can make the difference between total business failure and a company that can get back up and running.
Nobody can predict the future, which means nobody can guess how, exactly, disaster will strike. Perhaps your company will lose access to data thanks to a natural disaster. Others might fall victim to a cyberattack, or someone may accidentally-drop a critical computer. Whatever the problem, backup and disaster recovery are vital to ensure downtime is minimal for companies and their customers.
So — what is backup and disaster recovery. And how does ours work?
Today’s backup and disaster recovery programs are advanced and additionally intelligent, ensuring business continuity.
Backups are specifically copies of data in a secondary form, like an archive file. Ideally, people store them separately from the original data so that they can help restore files and data.
Disaster recovery puts backups into action with a strategy designed to protect companies and organizations from the fallout of data loss. With a disaster recovery plan, companies can tackle both outages and issues knowing that there is a strategy concerning maintenance and restoration of critical functions and data. With this strategy in place, companies experience minimal disruption to their business continuity, before, during, and after a disaster.
Types of Backup Solutions
Many backup solutions exist. And there are multiple ways to manage those backup files. Companies may use full backups, for example, creating a secure copy of every single file. Incremental backups copy only the data that has changed since a previous backup, while differential backups do that plus copy any information changed since the last full backup.
Likewise, there are also different places and ways people can store those backups. Mirror backups basically create an exact copy and store the latest data version in a backup repository without tracking different versions of the files. Local backups keep files on-site, while offsite, remote, cloud, and FTP backup offerings stay elsewhere.
Many people abide by the 3-2-1 solution for backups. That means that there are three data copies, with two backup copies on different devices or media types. At least one backup copy should be offsite, ensuring that any localized disaster will not impact both the original data and the backup. The on-site data backup ensures that, if disaster doesn’t strike locally, there’s a very accessible dataset for disaster recovery.
Our backup system is based on contiguous ‘save points,’ which we use to restore systems from various points in time. This generally improves continuity and maximizes the opportunity to find exact data. We also regularly test this data to ensure that files will restore quickly and cleanly.
Understanding Disaster Recovery
Another key point: without a robust disaster recovery plan, even the greatest backups are unusable. Disaster recovery keeps a business going and it requires planning. Unlike the data, no-one can bring back the time lost to a disaster or data outage. Consequently, there can be a loss in productivity and reputation.
Thus, every business should have a recovery time objective, outlining the amount of time it should take to recover normal business operations. Companies relying less on real-time access to data can last longer without restoration, while others depending heavily on data could experience consequences in minutes.
Furthermore, there is the consideration of how much data you can lose in an outage, otherwise known as the recovery point objective. If your company is constantly generating valuable data, you will need much more frequent backups, while others can stand to lose a certain amount.
Finally, some workloads may have priority over others. It is important to identify both the data and processes that are critical, ensuring that they take precedence in any disaster recovery plans.
Implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan
With technology like cloud computing and virtual networks, it is easier than ever to ensure staff still have access to both data and systems. This is one great part of modern disaster recovery and backups. Accordingly, it serves to minimize disruption. Of course, just as we test our data backups, we test our clients’ disaster recovery plans and processes. We do this to ensure they can get online and get to work.
We work in close consultation and collaboration with each customer to ensure their backup and disaster recovery strategy works. Data loss and business outages are unaffordable in today’s fast-paced world. With our expert help, however, even the most catastrophic data loss or outage is just a bump in the road rather than an insurmountable emergency.