Disaster recovery isn’t the easiest topic to approach for a business, and it’s precisely because it’s something that nobody ever wants to talk about. The reality of the situation is that it’s something that must be discussed, as the future of your organization depends on it. This might seem like an exaggeration, but we assure you that it’s not.
The fact remains that not even the presence of a data backup and disaster recovery solution is enough to ensure redundancy. Therefore, we recommend taking the following preventative measures:
Determine Your RPO and RTO
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are both key to guaranteeing the success of your disaster recovery plan. In essence, RPO and RTO correspond to how much data you want to back up, as well as how long you have to recover it before your business fails. You should shoot to back up as much data as you need to get back into a decent operational situation, all while making sure that your recovery time is kept to a minimum, while reducing downtime and data loss.
Figure Out Where Your Backups Are Stored
Once you’ve determined how much data you need to back up and how long it will take to restore it, the next step is figuring out where you want to store these backups. Storing them onsite is risky due to the fact that disasters often affect entire networks and infrastructures, but it probably doesn’t hurt to have one copy available close by. You absolutely want to have copies of your data both in the cloud and in a secure off-site location like a data center.
Test Your Backups to Ensure Reliability
The worst-case scenario is that you’ve figured out the perfect setup for your organization’s data backup only to find out that it doesn’t work. This is why you have to routinely test your data backups to ensure that they aren’t corrupted or damaged in any way. Granted, this might seem like a lot to remember, especially when you have so many other responsibilities to deal with throughout the day. This is why we recommend leaving this to a third party like Macatawa Technologies.
Macatawa Technologies can help you with each stage of your data backup and disaster recovery implementation process, whether you’re new to the entire concept or have put a considerable amount of thought into what your business needs. To learn more about our BDR solution, reach out to us!
