Best Practices For Addressing The Broken State Of Backup
- Which Backup is right for you depends on the value of your data and budget
Computer and server backup does not have to be complicated nor time consuming - modern solutions are more and more reliable because they successfully eliminate the human factor as a point of failure.
The Philosophy
We all know that backing up preserves the information that is stored on your server and workstations, but how far do you take your backup efforts? It depends on how much data you can 'afford' to lose.
For some businesses just backing up periodically will suffice. The thought here is that if you lose your data, you can restore it apart from your operating system, and the time that this takes is not a critical consideration.Low value data falls into this category. It makes sense as long as you are not dependent upon your computer for time-sensitive applications and tasks.
Other businesses depend on their dataand if for example a hard drive fails, their business is down until they can get it back up and running again. A more comprehensive backup plan is recommended to help recover from disasters in a timely manner.
Before we go further we need to define two very important concepts without which we cannot determine which is best for your specific situation.
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) How much time it takes to have your data back online
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO) How much data can you afford to loose since the last backup
Computer Backup Options
There are several ways to tackle backups of your important data. They are:
