Data backup is a must-have for every business, but it isn’t enough to just copy your data. You will need to have a data recovery strategy in place to ensure that your business can effectively respond after a data loss incident. Today, we’ll take a look at why considering your recovery strategy early is important, and how to prioritize it with everything else going on with your business.
The “Disaster”
Every disaster doesn’t need to ruin your workplace. Sure, you might be the victim of an “act of God” like a fire or a flood, but the reality is that most of the time, if you lose data, it is the result of something a little more subtle. There’s nothing subtle about millions of gallons of water seeping up from the ground and overtaking your workspace, of course, but there is when a component on your seven-year-old server fails and you are left without all the data and applications that it hosts.
The point is that disasters come in all shapes and sizes, and if your business isn’t ready for every single one of them, chances are that it will be the one you aren’t ready for that you will be hit with. Let’s go through some of the considerations you will have to make when strategizing your data recovery platform and how recovery impacts businesses.
SMBs and Data Loss
It has been proven that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the companies hurt the most by data loss. Larger businesses typically have the means to build their data redundancy and the ability to recover this data when needed. Smaller companies don’t have that luxury, so it is important to realize just how important data backup and recovery is. 60 percent of SMBs will shut down within six months if they have a dramatic data loss incident, so it is a situation that needs immediate attention. Here are some tips to help you build a more robust backup and recovery strategy.
3-2-1
The 3-2-1 rule is a policy that builds stable redundancy of a company’s data and computing assets. Essentially, the business keeps three copies of data, two of which are kept onsite, with one copy stored offsite. We suggest the offsite storage be in the cloud, as with our backup and disaster recovery (BDR) service, but it can be as simple as taking a hard drive with your backed-up data offsite when you leave for the day. Either way, having three copies of your data can go a long way toward building data security.
Recovery
Planning out data recovery is crucial. If you were to have a backup plan and you end up losing data with no plan on how to recover it, you could have a problem maintaining business continuity. You can use a service (like our BDR) or there is software you can use that will help you manage your backup and recovery processes yourself, but make sure you have an idea how your business can get back up and running quickest and then prioritize that strategy.
Testing Backups
Not only should you concoct a consistent backup schedule, you should always test your backups to ensure that they are working properly. Nothing is worse for a small business than having to go through a data loss disaster and have a backup in place that wasn’t working for days or weeks. Be sure to log your tests so that any IT administrator can know when data was backed up and how to recover it should the need arise.
Leave Recovery to the Experts
There is so much riding on your business’ data, and potentially your recovery process that trying to manage the situation yourself, while noble, could end up being extraordinarily messy. The experts at Data Net know the best practices of data recovery. They won’t defragment disk drives, they won’t use the same media without formatting it, they will ensure that the recovery process fits into the parameters you need it to, and much, much more.
Data recovery may not be the most pressing strategy your business needs to focus on, but it is important, and having experts assisting you is a great way to ensure data recovery is successful if needed. Give us a call at (760) 466-1200 to learn more.
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