Tip of the Week: How to Troubleshoot A Failed Backup

When a disaster strikes, you should be able to recover quickly and efficiently with minimal downtime. Unfortunately, for some businesses, things don’t work out quite so smoothly. If your backup doesn’t process correctly, you might be in a bind when it comes time to restore operations from your backed-up data. How does one go about troubleshooting a failed backup?

According to Rachel A. Dines, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, there are several reasons that a backup might not process properly. Perhaps the backup simply doesn’t have time to process during the scheduled period, and it simply doesn’t finish up, or it takes too long and starts to dig into the preciously-productive hours of the workday.

According to Processor magazine, there are different kinds of server backup failures. As with any technical issue, there are one-time events that can be fixed fairly easily, and there are consistent problems that might not have a simple fix. A single backup failure could potentially be caused by a configuration issue or other common problems, and might be resolved by simply trying the backup again. If this doesn’t work, you’re probably dealing with a much bigger issue.

If multiple servers are having trouble backing up, you know something more complicated is causing the problem. Perhaps there’s a discrepancy with the power supply or the network connection. One way to avoid this is by ensuring that all of your hardware and software is up-to-date with the latest patches and upgrades.

Often, some businesses might find that their infrastructure is just too massive for a single backup snapshot. In this case, it’s important to understand which data absolutely needs to be backed up. For example, you don’t need to stress your backup solution’s capacity by backing up files that haven’t been changed on a daily basis. Instead, you can configure a solution to only back up the files which have been changed throughout the day, which takes some strain off of the backup process.

Of course, the ideal backup process occurs without incident, and happens multiple times throughout the day. These backups should also be moved off-site. If a disaster were to destroy your entire IT infrastructure, it’s quite possible that it could destroy your backup, too. Additionally, they should be monitored for any failure. It would be a nasty little surprise to find that your backups are corrupted when you need them most.

With Computerware’s Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution, you don’t have to worry about monitoring your backups and making sure they work when you need them most. The BDR performs regular backups throughout the day of any information which has been changed within your network, then pushes your backups to a secure, off-site location. Furthermore, your backups are constantly monitored and tested to ensure your data is available when you need it.

For more information about how to ensure your data stays safe during a disaster, give Computerware a call at (703) 821-8200.