Backup and Recovery

Ensuring that you are prepared for the worst should an unexpected disaster strike, need not be costly or painful ...

What would happen were you to arrive for work one day and disaster has struck your office or a key IT system? For many businesses documents, data and email is at the centre of everything they do. Often times there may be regulatory regimes and requirement to satisfy so the keeping of duplicate record and data sets becomes paramount to the continued success and ongoing functioning of the business.

We provide advice and solutions to mitigate the risks including:

• Automated data back up services
• System recovery solutions
• Disaster recovery and continuity planning
• Hosted email & messaging solutions
• System resilience testing

Creating a Backup and Recovery Plan

Data backup is an insurance plan. Important files are accidentally deleted all the time. Mission-critical data can become corrupt. Natural disasters can leave your office in ruin. With a solid backup and recovery plan, you can recover from any of these. Without one, you're left with nothing to fall back on.

Figuring Out a Backup Plan

It takes time to create and implement a backup and recovery plan. You'll need to figure out what data needs to be backed up, how often the data should be backed up, and more. To help you create a plan, consider the following:

• How important is the data on your systems?
  The importance of data can go a long way in helping you determine if you need to back it up—as well as when and how it should be backed up. For critical data, such as a database, you'll want to have redundant backup sets that extend back for several backup periods. For less important data, such as daily user files, you won't need such an elaborate backup plan, but you'll need to back up the data regularly and ensure that the data can be recovered easily.
• What type of information does the data contain?
  Data that doesn't seem important to you may be very important to someone else. Thus, the type of information the data contains can help you determine if you need to back up the data—as well as when and how the data should be backed up.
• How often does the data change?
  The frequency of change can affect your decision on how often the data should be backed up. For example, data that changes daily should be backed up daily.
• How quickly do you need to recover the data?
  Time is an important factor in creating a backup plan. For critical systems, you may need to get back online swiftly. To do this, you may need to alter your backup plan.
• Do you have the equipment to perform backups?
  You must have backup hardware to perform backups. To perform timely backups, you may need several backup devices and several sets of backup media. Backup hardware includes tape drives, optical drives, and removable disk drives. Generally, tape drives are less expensive but slower than other types of drives.
• Who will be responsible for the backup and recovery plan?
  Ideally, someone should be a primary contact for the organization's backup and recovery plan. This person may also be responsible for performing the actual backup and recovery of data.
• What is the best time to schedule backups?
  Scheduling backups when system use is as low as possible will speed the backup process. However, you can't always schedule backups for off-peak hours. So you'll need to carefully plan when key system data is backed up.
• Do you need to store backups off-site?
  Storing copies of backup tapes off-site is essential to recovering your systems in the case of a natural disaster. In your off-site storage location, you should also include copies of the software you may need to install to reestablish operational systems