Off-Site and On-Site Back Up
Backups - Often ignored - rarely used - always a lifesaver!
It's hard to convey the importance of backing up your data and having this available when you need it the most.
For any business that values its data or had the need to make use of recovering data will know the importance of it and while a good backup strategy is often employed AFTER a data loss event - employing one from the start is a very good practice and provides peace of mind - for yourself and us as IT Support!
What you backup, how, where and when are conversations we need to have with the client as this can have an effect on many elements of the recovery process.
There are many strategies in backing up your data, for example - Critical company data only, Operating system recovery, on-Site backup only, Off-Site backup only or a combination of both
To give you an example of two clients we have. One has a 'main server - DC' with 4 other servers and over 60 office PC's. They deploy a massive backup strategy that includes recovery of entire servers, company data, all email data and it is stored both on-site and off-site.
In comparison one client has a single server (DC) with around 25 PC's and will backup on-site only just their critical company data.
Backing up is something you either do or you don’t - we can only encourage you to do it - but you will wish you had the one time when you need it!
WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP?
MINIMUM - We would recommend that you backup your critical company files onto a removable medium device such as pen drive or external hard drive for each PC that has important data.
BASIC - We would recommend that you backup your critical company data (from data stored in a central location) and dedicate a single office staff member to be responsible for swapping the drives each day and backup onto multiple external hard drives (minimum 2 drives) ensuring that they are rotated daily so that one is one site each evening, this way should the worst happen you data would be a maximum of 24 hours old for recovery.
IDEAL - We would recommend that your data is stored in a centralised location, ideally on a server (but not essential), and the built-in Windows Backup software is used to backup this data to external hard drives rotated daily (5 hard drives) which includes your critical company data and the operating system of the base unit. In addition, we would strongly recommend that you store critical company data OFF-SITE through the use of our Cloud Backup software system.
BELTS and BRACES - We would employ the strategy above in the IDEAL recommendation plus deploy a Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM) server which is a computer box with the DPM Software installed and lots of internal hard drive disk space. DPM is a wonderful piece of software and gives the facility to back up your data for many days with multiple backup points throughout the day, so for example consider your Company Accounts data - this can be backed up once a day or 24 times a day (every hour) for a whole month which gives you some impressive data recovery options. In addition, we can perform a 'Bare Metal Recovery' backup with DPM and this would allow us to recover a failed, stolen or damaged server or base unit within a few hours!
Backing up your data has to be one of THE most important aspects of having an IT system and we can help you protect it to suit a budget, your peace of mind or a combination of both.
We have the knowledge and the expertise to provide a suitable and reliable solution that will protect your data - call us for free advice and prices.
