Let’s Clear Up Some Major Misconceptions About Data Backup

Data backup is a critical component of a business continuity plan, but there are many businesses that fail to understand why data backup is important, as well as what it entails. We want to clear up some facts about how data backup is important, and why you need it for your business. Only with a thorough understanding of how your data backup saves your infrastructure can you effectively use it for business continuity.

Multiple Copies Doesn’t Guarantee Effective Backup
It’s a best practice to keep multiple copies of your data strewn across various parts of your computing infrastructure. One should be in-house, while another should be stored off-site and in the cloud, completely unconnected from your in-house network. However, just because you have several backups of your data doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be effective when you need them most. Regardless of where they’re stored, data backups are still vulnerable to user error and data corruption. To avoid this unfortunate circumstance, make a habit out of regularly testing your data backups.

Data Often Cannot Be Restored from the Original
While there may be an opportunity to restore data following a loss incident, it’s not always a guarantee. Regardless, rebuilding data out of nothing would certainly be a time-consuming endeavor, especially if you lost a significant portion of your data infrastructure. Instead, it’s better and more time-conscious to just restore a backup of the data rather than attempting to restore data from what remains of your data disaster.

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Aren't the Same Thing
It’s worth mentioning that data backup and disaster recovery aren’t the same thing, but are quite closely related. Data backup is the act of taking the backup itself, while disaster recovery is the ability to recover these data backups. Data backup represents a figure known as the recovery point objective, which determines how much data you want to back up at any given time. Disaster recovery, on the other hand, focuses on the recovery time objective, which is how long it takes you to get back to normal operations. Both of these should be clearly outlined in order to guarantee that your disaster recovery can go as smoothly as possible.

One of the best ways to address all of these misconceptions is with a backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution from Macro Systems. Our BDR can help your business fully leverage enterprise-level business continuity software that allows for optimal uptime and efficiency. Our BDR can take backups as often as every fifteen minutes--automatically--without disrupting the workday. Furthermore, these backups are captured both in the BDR device and in an off-site data center, from which they can be restored remotely in the event of a data loss disaster. The BDR can act as a server unit while your business makes plans to replace your faulty hardware.

To learn more about BDR and business continuity, reach out to us at (703) 359-9211. Our professional technicians would be happy to answer any questions or concerns you might have over the future of your data infrastructure.