Backup Secrets from the Pros

Data backup is one of the most important parts of protecting your digital assets, but many organizations are unable to successfully pull it off without a hitch. We’ll help you get a feel for what should happen when you set up your data backup system, what happens when you initiate a backup, and how to proceed with restoring it.

What Data Should Be Backed Up?

Your business stores and uses a lot of data, so in times of strife, you will have to make some difficult decisions about which data to restore. Generally speaking, you should not restore all of your data immediately, as this process could take large amounts of time when time is of the essence. Instead, identify data needed to keep operations running at a minimum acceptable level. Then prioritize your efforts on restoring this data as soon as possible with the rest coming over time as the restoration process unfolds.

How Often Do Backups Occur?

It used to be the case that data backups would only happen once or twice a day at the most. This was because the process used--tape backup--was an extremely resource-intensive process that ate into other operations during the workday. Instead, if you focus on mission-critical data that has been changed recently compared to those that simply exist in the background, you can take backups much more frequently.

Where Do the Backups Get Stored?

We generally recommend that you utilize the 3-2-1 rule for your data backups; three copies of your data total, in two separate physical locations, and one of those backups should be totally off site in a secure cloud. We don’t recommend that you store all of your backups on-premises on the off-chance that your network were to become compromised or your network were to be destroyed by a disaster of some sort.

Where Does the Backup Deploy To?

No matter how severe the data disaster is, you need to have a game plan in place for where your data will be restored to. Many modern backup and disaster recovery systems have hardware that can function as a temporary server while you work on securing a replacement, so we recommend implementing a data backup system that can keep your organization operational in the interim.

Does this sound like a lot to handle? Well, don’t worry, you’re never alone with Computerware on your side!

If your business wants to take the guesswork out of business continuity and data backups, leave the heavy lifting to Computerware. We are happy to assist you with each stage of the process and automate the entire thing for you. To learn more, reach out to us at (703) 821-8200.