How Often Should I Backup and How?

Your data is a valuable asset. Data is (or should be) the foundation for sound decision-making, planning and strategic management and it is vital for your day-to-day operations.

Statistics show that system failures do occur and accordingly data corruption and loss is inevitably. While preventing system breakdown and data loss is a main priority for any IT department, ensuring a smooth and efficient recovery process in case of data loss is of equal importance.

While you could be one of the lucky ones who will never experience a problem, it is more likely than not that you at some point will face the unfortunate circumstance of having to recover lost or damaged data. It is best not to gamble with the odds.

Source: Author’s estimates based on data from Safeware, The Insurance Agency, Inc.”2000 Safeware Loss Study” 2001; and ONTRACK Data International, Inc. “Understanding Data Loss” 2003. 

I once heard a saying that goes: “backup, backup, and backup, you can never have enough backups”. The more frequent they are, the more up-to-date they will be. The more backups you have, the more control you’ll have over which data you want to recover from a certain date and time.

The backup process per se is rather straightforward but there are many choices and options in regards to your backup policies. You might ask yourself: how often should I back up? How many backups? What is the exact process? What do I do in case of system breakdown and data loss?

Ultimately, your goal is to minimize your efforts while maximizing the reliability of your backup procedures. You want a ‘set it and forget it tool’ and one that works so you can concentrate on your business and its profit centers.

You should have the peace of mind that if you ever have to recover your data, it will be cost efficient and accomplished with little effort and minimal data loss

At FMT Consultants we offer 24/7 Remote Monitoring and Management services (RMM) which include:

• Real-time monitoring of network, server and workstation devices
• Server, workstation and network management
• Security management including anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall
• Device and software update management
• And much more

On a daily basis, our solution backups your complete server including the operating system, programs, applications and all system log files and data to a local, on-premises storage for fast and easy recovery. In addition, we will setup an online data replication to an offsite location in case your local backup is unreadable or unavailable.

By having an offsite copy of your backup you will have the assurance that your data is safe even though your on-premise backup unit should fail or be destroyed by fire, water damage, theft etc.  Our offsite replication is a full “bare metal recovery” type in which we can restore the entire backup to a new server.

Retrieving your data from the Internet, however, can be slow process, depending on the amount of data and speed of your internet connection. It can take days or even a few weeks in case of extreme amounts of data. To ensure a quick and smooth date recovery process, our service includes a next day copy of all your data to an external drive shipped overnight.

Having multiple copies of your data backup is essential. You’ll need it when you can’t read a backup set or when you need to go back to a specific point in time.

At FMT Consultants we deliver a wide range of IT services that make it easier and more affordable to protect and restore your data, and we manage it from a remote management console to ensure your IT system is constantly optimized and up to date.

Specifications

• Supported Platforms and Applications – Microsoft Windows 2003, 2008, on 32- and 64-bit platforms and Microsoft Exchange (2003, 2007, 2010), SQL Server 2005 and 2008 databases and SharePoint 2007 and 2010, VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer virtualization platforms.
• Certified for Windows Server 2008® R2 – Independently tested to meet Microsoft-recommended standards for security, stability, availability, reliability and compatibility with the Windows Server 2008 platform.
• Full System Replication – replicates the operating system, system state, application and data through physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) replication to an offline local or remote Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer virtual server.

Features

• Block Level Infinite Incremental Backup
• Full System Replication
• Protection for Virtual Servers
• Single Snapshot Backup with Five Restore Types
• Bare Metal Restore to Dissimilar Hardware
• Physical-to-Virtual Server Migration
• Point-In-Time Backup View
• High Frequency Backups
• Backup Throttling
• Integrated Access to Cloud Storage
• Granular Mailbox Recovery
• Desktop/Laptop Protection
• Encryption 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption
• Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Support
• VMware VCenter™ Server V4 Support
• Protection for Remote Offices and Branch Offices
• Offline Synchronization
• Custom Application Protection
• Multi-Stream Replication

Advantages

• Peace of Mind
• Savings on Storage
• Simplicity
• Reduction of Risk
• A Perfect fit in any environment
• Flexibility to protect your PCs
• Cloud Readiness

Again, your data is valuable and you are highly dependent on your computer systems. At FMT Consultants we have many years of experience in planning and implementing safe, secure, and reliable backup and data recovery procedures for our clients.

Contact us to hear more about our Remote Monitoring and Managed IT Services.

Written by:
Felipe Magos, Senior IT Consultant
FMT Consultants