DAILY BACKUPS AND DISASTER RECOVERY PREPARATION

It's never good to lose data, whether it's an email, an important document, or an entire file system....

Consider the impact of data loss to your business and ask your self how reliable is your backup plan.

Do you have data backups in place?
Are they running properly?
Are your backups protecting you from:
Fire Flood Data Corruption Virus Corruption Theft Electrical Surge General Hardware Failure

     So what can you do to prevent data loss and hours of work?

• Add Redundancy.  Have more than one backup process running each day
• Implement backup to media that can be taken offsite
• Monitor the backup logs daily
• Scheduled restore test on a 6 to 12 month basis
• Take one step further and prepare a full disaster recovery plan for your business
  
   

In addition to any tape backup, it's a good idea to have an external drive to duplicate any documents, or file/folder structures in place within your live server environment.  With 500GB USB External Hard Drives now selling for around $100, 1TB USB Drives sell for around $150, the benefits and insurance to your companies information and labor can be secured for very little investment.  In most cases this solution can be implemented in just a few hours.

Backups of this type are scheduled and virtually hands-off.  Other than verifying backups occasionally, this is a self-sufficient means of backing up your electronic data.  Backups can be scheduled to run daily, providing an additional "full-system" backup for your business.

While an external drive located onsite with your server is potentially vulnerable to the same types of external crisis, (fire/flood), it provides a redundant backup that most companies are lacking. 

Offsite backups are essential to ensuring that your data is safe

With the increase in bandwidth on secured internet connections over the last few years, offsite backups have become an excellent, cost efficient option for most businesses.  A Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel allows INS to schedule a backup of your data to run after hours.  This enables us to effectively backup your data while avoiding interruption of your daily routine and downtime for your employees.       The INS remote servers are safe and secure.  Our fiber-optic connection is the fastest connection available.  High capacity battery backups guard against "brown-outs" during the back up process and on-site generators ensure the servers stay powered at all times.   Approximately one hour is all that is required to setup the initial connection and backup process.

Backup tapes should be taken offsite daily
Backup tapes do their job, but if they're not taken offsite they are suddenly useless in the face of a fire, flood or other disaster.  Backup tapes sitting on top of your server are only protecting you from hard drive failure.  All will be lost. Backup tapes get old.  They get dirty.  They wear out.  They become Unreliable

Consider a newer technology with the same basic principle.  Dell's RD1000 offers a familiar process, but utilizes small SATA Hard Drives in place of tapes.  The material cost is higher, but the life expectancy is easily five times that of a conventional backup tape.  Take into consideration that the drives never need to be cleaned and you'll quickly realize where that extra money went. 

The 3 R's of Data Backup: "Repetition, Redundancy and Repetition"
The best way to protect your data against disaster is to administer multiple types of backups.  Tapes.  External Hard Drives.  Offsite backups.  Nothing is fool-proof.  Ultimately, processes fail and systems break down.  Guarding against the loss of critical data is one of the few things you can actually do for your business and prepare for in advance.

Don't learn a lesson hard way!  The cost of implementing a system of redundant backups is minimal compared to the security it brings. 

CHART LIST AVERAGE COST TO IMPLEMENT SEVERAL BACKUP METHODS

Contact Integrated Network Systems for all of your Backup needs

ASK ABOUT INS OFFSITE BACKUP SERVICES AND OUR MONTHLY MONITORING SERVICES