Strata Information Technology Blog

A backup is a critical consideration for any business, in more ways than one. We have a tendency to immediately jump to “business-ending disaster” whenever we mention a backup. However, we’ve realized that this may have the unfortunate side effect of lulling you into a false sense of complacency - after all, what are the chances of being struck by a “business-ending disaster?”

If you subscribe to Murphy’s Law, you understand why it is so crucial for every business to have a backup solution planned, put into place, and prepared for the worst. However, not every business should go about putting their backup strategy together in the same way. After all, their needs will be different, based on their industry, the data they store, and a variety of other factors.

March 31, 2018 is World Backup Day. Data is a commodity, but unlike other commodities--it can be replicated without hurting its value. As a result, data backup has become a critical need for the modern business. World Backup Day has been created to remind people to protect their assets by backing up their files.

Your data is a critical part of your business, and as such, needs to be protected. One of the most effective means of doing so is to maintain reliable backups. However, not just any backup will do. In today’s blog, we’ll review what you need to keep in mind in order to successfully maintain a data backup.

If you suddenly were to find yourself in a data-loss situation, you would want to have some sort of backup in place to protect your critical data. However, not all backup solutions are the same, and some will do a better job than others at keeping your data safe while remaining convenient to the needs of a business. As an example, let’s compare tape backup to a cloud-based backup and data recovery solution.

There are a lot of things a business should have, that they hopefully won’t need. A few examples might include a fire extinguisher, a plunger, or a Backup and Disaster Recovery solution. Each of them are exceptionally important in their own way. Since today is World Backup Day, we’ll stick to discussing BDR.

WRONG!

Here’s a big (and scary) misconception you might have about your data backups: backing up your data guarantees a fast recovery. It does NOT! In short, data backup is nothing more than copying files. There are a number of ways data can be backed up, both manually and automatically—and you don’t need to know all the technical ins and outs of them. But what you DO need to know is whether your current backup is set up in a way that would allow for the fastest possible recovery time in the event of a disaster or data-erasing event. You might be shocked to find out it’s not as fast and easy as you’d like to think.

When you first opened the doors of your business, you were probably preoccupied with thoughts of running said business. What you probably hadn’t spared much thought to, however, was the prospect of it all going wrong. Fast-forward to now: how prepared are you to deal with an impending crisis that is poised to wipe out all you’ve worked for? This exact scenario is why it is crucial for every business to have a business continuity plan prepared, as well as a data recovery strategy set up and ready.

When you mention the term 'disaster recovery,' most people think about the big ground-shattering events like earthquakes, fires, floods, tropical storms, etc. While these natural events are certainly disasters and devastating in their own right, smaller things can constitute as a disaster for your business, and they aren't seasonal.