Data is life of any company. Just like you buy life insurance for protecting your family, backup and disaster recovery is like an insurance to your company’s data. Planning the best backup and disaster recovery strategy will guarantee business continuity.
In a report published, the DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) market will be worth nearly $12 billion by 2020. With rising demand of data storage, businesses need to find an optimal solution for backing up their data constantly. This calls for an updated and reliable backup and recovery solution so as to maintain business operations anytime network goes down.
Many businesses often think that after having backup and recovery solution, they are ready to deal with any kind of disaster. But, that is just one aspect of business continuity and disaster recovery. You need to have a comprehensive plan for backup and disaster recovery to determine the right kind of solution guaranteeing smoother running of business.
For that purpose, preparing with the best backup and disaster recovery plan can save your day. Here we will be highlighting some practices which you can opt for having a disaster free storage architecture and be at a better peace of mind. Let’s read on some points leading you to develop backup and disaster recovery strategy for your business.
- Analyze data: business data needs certain kinds of standards when it comes to backup and disaster recovery. What kind of data you have and how do you store it? Does your data locally reside or is it stored in the cloud? How frequently it is used? And, most importantly, how long can your company survive without its availability? Analyzing your data will help you determine which data is the most important for your company.
- Ask questions: Before backup strategy, think about the importance of your data:
- What maximum amount of data loss your business can tolerate?
- What maximum downtime your business can tolerate?
- Which data you need immediately?
- Which data can be restored afterwards?
- Analyze possible incidents: analyze what kind of events can occur and can cause harm to your data. To find the right kind of backup and disaster recovery for your data, it is important to determine the kinds of threats in your environment. Now a days, ransomware, hardware failure and cyber-attacks are the top reasons for such kind of incidents. But, unforeseen events like fire, water damage or natural disasters should also be considered.
- Checking environment: selecting the right kind of backup and disaster recovery solution is a lot dependent on your environment. Does your company use laptops or servers? Do you have multiple branches? Does it operate on physical or virtual environment or mix? Select the one which best suits your company’s environment.
- Cost considerations for backup and disaster recovery: Backup and disaster recovery requires a comprehensive plan which involves finding the right kind of provider which can assist you in breaking down functional areas, determining its cost and critical applications that you will be needing for each task. Cost consideration is important part of backup and disaster recovery plan. Identify different backup vendors’ packages and analyze Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the purpose of long term data retention.
Many vendors attract with lower initial prices. However, if data is increasing, backup solutions can cost you much. That is why some vendors like StoneFly gives this ease of “pay as you grow”. In this, you pay only for what you use without upfront costs.
- Choosing right software: choose the right kind of software which supports these questions:
- Does this backup support storage tiering? (helpful in prioritizing the most important data)
- Will this backup and disaster recovery software support my entire IT environment? (virtual servers, physical servers, cloud environment, branches)
- Can I have copies on second backup target? (removable media is preferred for having an additional second backup)
- Does this backup support media rotation? (to implement full backup and disaster recovery especially for smaller environments with single server infrastructures, laptop users or single NAS implementation)
- Does this backup support backup to cloud? (backing up data to cloud is important for data availability from offsite servers)
- 3-2-1 backup strategy: whether it is a small business or larger one, implementing 3-2-1 rule for backup and disaster recovery is necessary. This way you are sure that your data is backed up and even if one media fails, the other one is there to rescue. Implement the one which supports 3-2-1 rule of backup and disaster recovery.
- Backup and NAS: Many vendors are providing backup and disaster recovery solutions with NAS. Like StoneFly offers backup solutions which support NAS (CIFS/NFS) and iSCSI protocols. For network storage plus cloud such as Azure blob, Amazon S3.
- Backup and Cloud: Cloud backup is also advantageous when it comes to have a backup and disaster recovery solution. It backs up data from an offsite storage when your onsite server goes down. But, this one needs stronger network to back up your data instantly.
Backup to cloud is a good solution for keeping your copies of data off-site.Though, many claim that it is a cost effective solution, still cost consideration is important for long term data retention.
- Putting your plan to test:
It is the worst time to test your backup software when disaster happens. Many don’t think it is necessary and continue on without even actually testing it. Result is they lose all their data and don’t actually know how to get it back.
Backup solutions may contain loopholes and gaps which must be tested before. Many service providers like StoneFly gives full technical help in case you plan to have backup and disaster recovery for your business.
- Getting the best backup and disaster recovery solutions:
Search for the best backup and disaster recover solutions providers. In our top list is StoneFly’s backup appliance and its cloud backup and recovery products. These products consolidate server, storage and backup systems into one easy to manage and centralized backup solution.
Wrap-up:
Business data is important. Losing it for a long period of time can halt business growth very badly. SOHO, small SMBs, mid-sized businesses and large enterprises should consider data protection for restoring their data. You can also used Veeam Backup and Replication according to your needs. Before you start to implement your backup and disaster recovery, analyze your IT environment, consider cost and the best solutions available in the market. Last but not least, implement 3-2-1 rule and perform restore tests.
