Making backups is essential for the continuity of any business. Most business owners have adopted this as fact. But is your backup properly organized?
The loss of files or entire folders is very inconvenient, but fortunately you can fall back on your backup, right? Unfortunately, making a back-up is not a guarantee that you can also restore the data, or whether the recovered data is actually usable.
Causes of data loss
Every company has had to deal with data loss at one time. This could have been caused by a mistake, such as accidentally deleting a file and not being able to find it in the trash can, the malfunction of disks in a server or even a disaster on site (fire or water damage). But also actions by malicious individuals occur. Every day news is posted about viruses and hacking. Also, burglary and theft are not uncommon. There are many measures possible to avoid data loss. Through the establishment of (security) procedures and redundant performing hardware a lot can be prevented, but nothing is as effective as creating backups. The loss of critical data can lead to exorbitant costs and even bankruptcy.
Common mistakes when organizing the backup
There is little worse than have to rely on a backup only to find out that the recovered data is also corrupted, or so outdated that it is unusable. Here is a list of common mistakes when organizing the backup.
- No backups – unfortunately this still happens, usually for reasons of cost saving. In our experience, no reason is good enough to not make backups.
- No retention – when the backup is always overwritten with the latest version, it can not be reverted to a previous version. When corruption of data is noticed too late, it will be included in the backup and recovery is pointless.
- Inadequate distribution – the nearer the time of the backup is to the last known good state of the data, you will lose the least amount of work. Therefor you should make a backup schedule which takes into account the times when the data changes. In the case of a company which is opened Monday to Friday, it is wise to make a daily backup every night on those days. To be able to go back further in time, also store a some weekly backups and a number of monthly backups (keeping your statutory retention requirements in mind).
- Backups are not stored outside of the building – in our experience, backups to physical media such as tapes are often stored on site. This is very convenient when a restore needs to be made, but disastrous when a calamity occurs at the site.
Backups on the 1A-server
The 1A-server has three options for creating backups.
Tape Backup
Traditionally, backing up to tape is customary. This method, however, has a number of disadvantages in that an initial investment is required for the hardware, expanding the capacity is expensive, it is a physical medium which needs to be stored at a different location, the tapes must be replaced periodically, and it is a slow medium.
Online Backup
Making backups in the cloud has become very popular in recent years. Most cons of tape backup belong to the past when using this type of backup, making it an excellent solution. But there are also a few caveats: the data must be sent over the Internet and consumption of (estimated) quota usage will be billed.
Rsnapshot
This option allows backups to be made of a certain point in time in the intervals daily, weekly and monthly and multiple backups can be stored. Also, backing up to another location is possible.
Are you looking for a good solution where your backups can be managed with ease? Please contact us or take the quickscan.
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