Strong Backup Practices is as Easy as Counting to Three
Individuals are increasingly understanding the value of their data, and that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of small and medium-sized businesses are operating today without any type of data backup protecting their business’ data, and that, of course, is bad. It is important that if you don’t have a dedicated data backup and recovery strategy in place, that you work to fix that immediately. Today we’ll tell you why.
Keeping Redundant
Typically, you don’t want to be redundant. But when it comes to your business’ data, you absolutely do. The reason is that there are numerous (countless even) ways where your business, if it loses its data (or even control of it) would be in great peril. Redundancy means that you have your systems backed up and ready to restore should something terrible happen.
The 3-2-1 Rule Spells R-e-d-u-n-d-a-n-c-y
One of the best ways that you can ensure that your business has built a proper level of redundancy is by subscribing to the 3-2-1 rule. This is a guideline that every business should adhere to. Essentially it means keeping (at least) three copies of your data. Two are stored onsite and one is stored offsite.
Our clients have their working copy, which is the data they use everyday; then they have an onsite backup, which is stored in a specially-designed Network Attached Storage (NAS) device called a BDR; and finally, they have their offsite storage, which is uploaded to offsite storage in the cloud. The redundancy built effectively ensures that whatever happens to your business, you will have a way to restore your data. The BDR also allows for incremental backups, which means that as you work, the changes are backed up to the BDR periodically (every hour and as often as every 15 minutes). Doing so provides you with a copy of your data that is up to date and ready to restore regardless of the circumstances that require you to restore your data from your backup platforms. Protecting your data is as simple as finding the right solution and it doesn’t get much better or more simple than our BDR service. If you would like to talk to one of our IT consultants about building data redundancy, give us a call today at (616) 394-4940.