Many businesses unknowingly have inadequate backup plans or none at all. Common comments we hear are “it’s in the cloud” or “on that USB drive” but upon further investigation we find that these are non-existent or not routinely updated.
Backup Types
There are two type of backups. System backups are copies of the operating system of the computer. Data backups are backups of work product.
System backups that are larger than data backups typically include work product data. These are meant to completely restore a failed system to a hard drive. This is often referred to as a bare metal restore. System backups are normally run less frequently and, because of the time involved, often have to be run over weekends.
Data backups are much smaller and often only include changed data since the last backup. These can be run several times a day if they don’t impact the user or at the very least, every evening.
3-2-1 Rule
The IT industry recommends following the 3-2-1 rule when it comes to backup. This simple policy recommends having 3 copies of the data, in 2 places, 1 of which is offsite. We take that a step further. Our Backup Solution provides both system and data backups and creates 3 copies of the data. We create one encrypted copy, locally, for fast recovery. An encrypted copy is compressed and sent off to two different servers, in different locations. One copy of the data is sent to a data center out of the area to allow for protection against a large geographical type disaster such as a major hurricane.
Data Backup Monitoring Solution
It’s one thing to setup and backup; it’s another to make sure it runs. Our backups are monitored daily. Failed or missed server backups are investigated immediately.