Did You Test Your Backup This Month?

If your company has employed a backup solution, what process do you go through to ensure it is doing its job? Backup systems need to be tested regularly to ensure all the proper files are being backed up, and to check data integrity.

Your backup solution, no matter what it is, was probably a somewhat significant investment. If your company is using a solution that requires manual attention, such as popping a tape in and out of a drive each day, then there are even those costs to think about too. How certain are you that your backup media actually contains a complete redundancy of all of your company's data? Obviously that is what you bought your backup solution for, and in a perfect world, that is what it is doing, but there are cases where data can get corrupt or tapes can lose their integrity and once a portion of your data goes missing, it could be very difficult and time-consuming (also known as expensive) to restore. Depending on your backup solution, it may be a simple process to test or it may require some time to evaluate the integrity of your archived data. Tape backups, for example, have a slow restore time, and for businesses that have fairly large amounts of data the process can be extended for even longer. Disk-to-disk-based backup solutions are much faster, and some solutions even have a very appealing failsafe for small businesses that let them virtualize a downed server, giving you a very responsive and accurate way to see if your business could survive based on the data that has been backed up. Ask yourself, did you test your backup solution this month? Could you imagine losing all of the data you created this month simply because your backup solution wasn't doing its job? Contact Directive at 607.433.2200 for more information on small business backup best practices, and if you need assistance, consulting, or management of your company's data backup solution.