When Data is Involved, Redundancy Can Be a Positive

Data is the spine of any modern organization. Since your business relies so heavily on it, you need to have measures in place to ensure that your company can access it in some way, shape or form at all times. Easier said than done, especially for a company on a restricted budget. Let's take a look at how you can perform a comprehensive data backup solution to protect your business.

Most of the time the word redundant would be used to describe something that’s not needed. For example: having two jugs of orange juice in your refrigerator would be deemed redundant because you only need one jug at a time. Your data can be viewed in much the same way. You want a second, or even third, copy of your data on the slim chance that you need it.

Thus, you want data redundancy; it’s a worst-case scenario, but you’re in trouble if you do ever come across a situation where your data is unavailable. Below are some of the significant considerations that you want to remember when thinking about data redundancy, as well as data backup and disaster recovery.

The Amount of Data You’re Recovering
When depending on your data backup solution, you can be taking backups once a day or you could be taking them numerous times a day. If you’re only taking them once at the end of the day, you could lose up to a whole day’s worth of data if a disaster occured. However, if you utilize a snapshot-based backup solution, you only take backups of data that have changed since the last time you took one, allowing you to back up your data as often as every fifteen minutes. It’s the perfect way to back up your data and it permits you to keep it as redundant as possible.

How Much Time Your Recovery Takes
If there is a significant amount of data that needs to be recovered, the process could take much longer than you think. Since you’re restoring from a tape rather than instantly through the cloud, you’ll be choosing a much slower method of restoration. Cloud-based BDR permits your business to restore data directly to any compatible device, including the BDR device itself, so that you can minimize downtime should a data loss incident occur.

The Location Storing Your Data Backups
On a final note, the redundancy aspect of your organization’s data backup system. Redundancy is about having numerous copies of your device, but it’s where you’re storing them that makes a significant difference for your business. You should follow the 3-2-1 rule for data backup and disaster recovery: you want three copies of your data overall (at least), with two of those stored off-site in some capacity (such as in the cloud or a secure off-site data center), and one on-site in case you need it.

Does your business need help with data redundancy or backup and disaster recovery? Macro Systems can help. To learn more, reach out to us at 703-359-9211.