Today’s businesses need a data backup, and just copying over data to another place every so often isn’t enough. Modern businesses need a comprehensive data recovery strategy in place to protect themselves from potential data loss in the event of a disaster. Let’s go through why it is critical to formulate one early on, and how to balance its maintenance with everything else your business demands.
First, We Need to Define “Disaster”…
When you hear the word “disaster,” what kind of thing pops into your head? Tornadoes, hurricanes, things of that sort, right? Nothing says “disaster” like a fire turning your server room into a room-sized ashtray with all your data gone.
You aren’t wrong, but isn’t it also a disaster if a server just fails? Nothing flashy, just a part goes bad, but you’re suddenly in the same boat. Your data is still gone.
Disasters can be big or small, and it almost doesn’t matter. If your business isn’t ready for them all, even the smallest could rock your business to its core. Let’s examine some critical considerations for your data recovery strategy, and how your business will be impacted by your recovery.
SMBs Feel Big Impacts from Data Loss
As though it wasn’t obvious, small and even medium-sized businesses are far more hurt by data loss than larger ones. After all, large businesses can build up their data redundancy and recovery preparations without much budgetary issue. Smaller companies need to invest a much more significant portion of their budget into these protections—and yes, need, as 60% of SMBs close their doors after significant data loss.
To help avoid these circumstances and create a trustworthy backup and disaster recovery strategy, we offer the following advice:
Plan With the Intent to Save Yourself
Considering what you’re planning for and how important it is, you can see why it is so crucial that you have a plan for data recovery. Having a backup plan is one thing, but without a plan to get your data back and your business chugging along again, you still aren’t doing yourself a ton of favors. While you can use a service like what we offer through our BDR services or some software to manage your data restoration, you still need to have a strategy to fully utilize it. There are a lot of threats out there, so having this plan ready to go when called upon is critical.
Make Sure You Can Trust Your Backups
In addition to having your backups being taken on a regular basis, you should also make a habit of testing these backups. Imagine that you were suddenly experiencing data loss, with a backup, but you don’t discover until you turn to it that your backups had been failing for a few days, never mind weeks. Running these tests helps you to avoid this, and keeping logs to inform an IT administrator when backups were run and how to recover them is another helpful step.
Be Thorough with Your Backups
If you’ve never heard of the 3-2-1 Backup Rule, it’s a good thing you’re reading this blog. The idea is to create reliable redundancy in your company’s infrastructure backups, and this can be accomplished by simply following this simple rule: at least three copies of your data, in at least two places, at least one of which is stored offsite and ideally in the cloud. This ensures that your backup is safe.
Don’t Take Risks with Your Data Recovery
So, you’ve made it through the disaster. You have your data, safe and sound, and you have whatever damage may have been caused by a disaster fixed. You’re ready! It’s time to restore your data!
How awful would it be if something went wrong now?
Turning to us frees you of the stresses and complications and challenges that any recovery process could (and likely will) create, allowing you to focus on the other considerations that are sure to be clamoring for your attention. We know the best practices involved, and we can help you establish a backup and recovery plan built around them. Give us a call at (610) 683-6883 to learn more.