The Importance of Backups
A good backup system is expensive but not compared to the cost of losing business data. Data can be lost for all sorts reasons. The big four are hardware failure, theft of equipment, fire and flood. Everyone knows that hard disks can fail but the other three are often dismissed as unlikely. Computer equipment theft is not as common as it used to be but if it happens to your business then data loss is going to be the result if you don’t have good backups. Flood is unlikely but don’t think of just water rising from heavy rain, consider the risk of a leaky roof or the office above yours having a burst pipe. Faulty air conditioning damaging the equipment it is there to protect is not unheard of. Fire is thankfully the least likely event but any business who is the victim of a fire will be devastated. Probably even more common than hardware failure is user deletion of data. This can be either by accident or maliciously. There are various ways of backing up vital data.
Tape backup systems are the traditional type and offer excellent protection if managed correctly. The benefits are that tapes can be stored off site or in fire resistant safes to give a good level of protection. As long as the backup system uses enough tapes then multiple copies of vital data will be available. This is especially useful if data loss goes undetected for some time. This is often the case if a single file or folder goes missing.
Unfortunately tape backup systems are expensive as quality tape drives are not cheap. Tapes are relatively cheap but the cost mounts up as a least 10 will be required to give adequate protection. As well as the tape drive, the server will need a suitable interface and a data cable which will add to the cost. Suitable software will also be needed. Windows servers do include basic backup but this is not good enough to provide an easily managed system
Many businesses choose to use external USB disk drives for backup. These are better than nothing but have some major drawbacks. Firstly they are connected directly to the server so any disaster that befalls the server is likely to affect the external drive. In the case of fire, flood or theft the external drive will also be lost. The only real protection these devices provide is against hardware failure of the server and accidental deletion of data.
The third option is to use online backups. These involve backing up data over the Internet to a special backup server. There are several advantages of this type of backup. The data is off site so whatever happens to the server the data is safe. They are automatic so no one needs to change tapes. They even work on bank holidays when a tape based system might fail due to no one changing the tape. On the down side backups are limited by the band width available from Internet connections.
Having the right hardware and software does not guarantee good backups. They need to be configured correctly and monitored to ensure adequate and continuous protection.
This is a very brief overview of the implications of backups. Call Atomik.biz today for help making the right choice for your business.