If your server suddenly crashed and ALL your data was erased, how long would it take before you returned to business as usual?

If you aren't sure, or if you think it would only be a short period of time, read on.

Below are three common and costly misunderstandings many businesses have about their data backup that give them a false sense of security:

Misunderstanding #1

Believing that tape backups are a reliable way to secure your data. WRONG! Tape backups have an average failure rate of 100% (no, that's not a typo). What makes this even worse is that tape backups will APPEAR to be working, giving you a false sense of security.

SOLUTION: External USB drives offer a fast, economical, and reliable way to backup your critical data and disk image. Couple external drives with a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device and you receive a second level of data backup protection that can make backup data available for use on computers even when the server is down. To protect and keep data accessible even when your office building goes down, you should also consider an offsite backup solution.

Misunderstanding #2

Backing up your data will allow you to restore your network to its original state, quickly and easily. WRONG AGAIN! Having just a copy of your data doesn't guarantee this at all. To help you understand, let me give you a simple analogy.

Let's suppose we made an exact replica of all the items in your house right now and put them offsite in a storage facility -- that would be a backup of your "data." If your house burned to the ground (God forbid!), we would have to first rebuild the HOUSE (which corresponds to the server, software and supporting environment) BEFORE we could restore all your items back from the storage facility. Obviously, that takes some time. That's why simply having a copy of your data doesn't guarantee that you'll be back up and running FAST. It could take several days before everything was restored; and that's assuming you have the data in a clean state and all the originally installed software disks.

SOLUTION: Including a disk image in your backup will greatly speed up the task of restoring your server in case of server hard drive failure. If your network needs to recover from server failure almost instantly, you should consider a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) appliance. These appliances take over the functions of a failed server in minutes without any noticeable impact on users while the failed server stays offline for repairs.

Misunderstanding #3

Trusting that backup is automatically working without doing periodic test restores. I see this happening a LOT. If you think your backups are working because you don't see any error messages or apparent problems, think again. I have seen instances when a critical file was needed from backup, it was discovered that backups stopped working MONTHS ago and all that data is now gone.

SOLUTION: Don't setup backup and forget it. Schedule periodic test restores. There is no better way to ensure your data is available to you when you need it.

Conclusion

Want to know for sure if your data is safe? The following list of questions should help you determine if you are adequately protected from data loss:

• Have you implemented an unattended data backup solution?
• Does your backup process include a disk image backup?
• Is your backup storage space adequate for the next six months? Or, the next year?
• Can the recovery disk be easily obtained in case the server needs to be restored?
• Have you implemented two levels of onsite backup that incorporate a NAS device?
• Are your mission critical servers cloned to a BDR appliance?
• Do you need access to backup data should your computers and office be inaccessible?
• Do you periodically check your backups by performing test restores?

About the Author

Ranjit has been writing on computer topics since 1987 and has authored five books on CAD (MicroStation and AutoCAD). His next book (sixth) is on success in life and business (Be-A-Teacher.com). He is the founder of RAM Corporation, a licensed Professional Engineer and the Chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers National Capital Section's (asce-ncs.org) Automation Committee. He welcomes comments and feedback via email. To email the author, use the Contact Us page on this Website.