Protect Your Business, Backup Your Data

What if there were a fire or other disaster at your home or office?
What if your hard drive would suddenly fail? Would you be able to recover the data on your PC? Or would it be lost forever?
Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place? Or have you procrastinated, and put off secure data storage for another day?

Studies show most businesses that experience a catastrophic loss of computer data never recover. A key component to ensure that this doesn't’t happen to your business is to implement a sound data backup and recovery plan.

Call Veraciti today to develop your backup and recovery plan.

Data Backup and Recovery

Because data is the heart of the enterprise, it's crucial for you to protect it. To protect your organization's data, you need to implement a data backup and recovery plan. Backing up files can protect against accidental loss of user data, database corruption, hardware failures, and even natural disasters. Veraciti can help you ensure that backups are performed and that backup information is available when you need it most.

Creating a Backup and Recovery Plan

Data backup is an insurance plan. Important files are accidentally deleted all the time. Mission-critical data can become corrupt. Natural disasters can leave your office in ruin. With a solid backup and recovery plan, you can recover from any of these. Without one, you're left with nothing to fall back on.

Figuring Out a Backup Plan

It takes time to create and implement a backup and recovery plan. You'll need to figure out what data needs to be backed up, how often the data should be backed up, and more. To help you create a plan, consider the following:

How important is the data on your systems? The importance of data can go a long way in helping you determine if you need to back it up—as well as when and how it should be backed up. For critical data, such as a database, you'll want to have redundant backup sets that extend back for several backup periods. For less important data, such as daily user files, you won't need such an elaborate backup plan, but you'll need to back up the data regularly and ensure that the data can be recovered easily.

How often does the data change? The frequency of change can affect your decision on how often the data should be backed up. For example, data that changes daily should be backed up daily.

How quickly do you need to recover the data? Time is an important factor in creating a backup plan. For critical systems, you may need to get back online swiftly. To do this, you may need to alter your backup plan.

Do you have the equipment to perform backups? You must have backup hardware to perform backups. To perform timely backups, you may need several backup devices and several sets of backup media. Backup hardware includes tape drives, optical drives, removable disk drives or a high-speed Internet connection with special backup software. Generally, tape drives are less expensive but slower than other types of drives.

Do you need to store backups off-site? Storing copies of backup tapes off-site is essential to recovering your systems in the case of a natural disaster. In your off-site storage location, you should also include copies of the software you may need to install to reestablish operational systems.

Are there any special backup considerations that need to be accommodated? Quite often, critical business applications such as email or databases are always active and therefore, require special methods for accurate backup.

Veraciti's team of professionals will work with you to answer all these questions before selecting a backup device and media.

Selecting Backup Devices and Media

Many tools are available for backing up data. Some are fast and expensive. Others are slow but very reliable. The backup solution that's right for your organization depends on many factors, including:

Capacity The amount of data that you need to back up on a routine basis. Can the backup hardware support the required load given your time and resource constraints?
Reliability The reliability of the backup hardware and media. Can you afford to sacrifice reliability to meet budget or time needs?
Extensibility The extensibility of the backup solution. Will this solution meet your needs as the organization grows?
Speed The speed with which data can be backed up and recovered. Can you afford to sacrifice speed to reduce costs?
Cost The cost of the backup solution. Does it fit into your budget?

After years of providing technical support for a variety of customers, the one question we've found that is sure to bring tears to the person calling support when there is a failure is: "How recent was your last good data backup? " Don't let this happen to you. Veraciti has evaluated backup solutions for literally hundreds of customers like you. Let us put that experience to work for you.

Common Backup Solutions

Capacity, reliability, extensibility, speed, and cost are the issues driving your backup plan. If you understand how these issues affect your organization, you'll be on track to select an appropriate backup solution. Some of the most commonly used backup solutions include:

Tape drives DAT and DLT tape drives are a common backup device. DAT drives use 4 mm and 8 mm tapes to store data. DLT drives and tapes are more expensive than standard tape drives and tapes, but they offer more speed and capacity. Newer tape technologies are becoming available with higher capacities and improved performance.
Auto-loader tape systems Auto-loader tape systems use a magazine of tapes to create extended backup volumes capable of meeting the high-capacity needs of the enterprise. With an auto-loader system, tapes within the magazine are automatically changed as needed during the backup or recovery process. The main drawback to these systems is the high cost.
Tape jukeboxes Tape jukeboxes are similar to auto-loader tape systems. Jukeboxes use magnetic optical disks rather than tapes to offer high-capacity solutions. These systems load and unload disks stored internally for backup and recovery operations. Their key drawback is the high cost.
Removable disks Removable disks, such as Iomega Jaz, CDs and DVDs are increasingly being used as backup devices. Removable disks offer good speed and ease of use for a single drive or single system backup. However, these devices do not scale well for large data backup applications.
Disk drives Disk drives provide the fastest way to back up and restore files. With disk drives, you can often accomplish in minutes what takes a tape drive hours. So when business needs mandate a speedy recovery, nothing beats a disk drive. The drawbacks to disk drives, however, are relatively high costs and less extensibility.
Internet-based Online Backup A combination of software and a high-speed Internet connection are used to send encrypted copies of your critical data files to an off-site data storage facility every night.

Together, Veraciti can help you answer the questions above and implement a backup and recovery plan that will ensure your company data is protected.

Simple Backup Management Tips

Once you've established a backup routine, it would be wise to keep these few safe backup tips in mind.

Test your backups!
Regular try restoring a few important files from your backup, just to make sure that your file selections and your backup media are performing as expected. We've heard plenty of horror stories that could have been avoided by occasionally running this simple test. Veraciti includes tests of backups as part its Preventative Maintenance programs provided to its customers.

Check your backup logs.
Most backup software provides a log file after each backup. Scan it to look for any problems. If you see words like "Error", "Failed", "Unable to...", etc. you should take a closer look. If you have problems, contact Veraciti technical support. We're here to give you peace of mind.

Keep a backup off-site!
We all hate to think of it, but things like theft, fire and other natural disasters can destroy your entire work area. Taking your backup media off-site is a good idea. Storing your backups in a safe deposit box is great, but an off-site dresser drawer would suffice. To avoid the hassle of transporting media off-site, you might want to consider an online backup service. Your data is transmitted over your Internet connection to a private and secure off-site storage area.