Are you protecting the right data?

Data is like a box of chocolates!

Some data is of very high value, and some is far less so. A healthy percentage of what most businesses backup isn’t really data at all!  How’s that you might ask?  Servers run an operating system that gets patched and many also run applications of some kind.  These things can technically be reconstructed via a reloading and reconfiguration process. Older archive data may be substantial in size and very low in value.  So, the temptation to backup only the most important stuff can be driven by cost. The more backup storage you need, the higher the cost of the solution!

Before you decide to pick and choose, think about various scenarios in which restoring an entire system may be required. How long would it take to reload and patch the operating system? How long to reload and patch the applications? What problems might occur in that process?  Just finding software activation keys can turn into a scavenger hunt that increases downtime in such an event. 

Strategic Data Backup Plan

Most businesses will ultimately want to back up everything to avoid excessive downtime in a recovery situation. Putting the whole system back to an earlier healthy state is usually the fastest thing to do and downtime can be very costly.

But many also look to offload flat files and/or archives to inexpensive cloud storage to avoid excessive BDR costs. Services like One Drive, SharePoint and Wasabi offer reliable storage that is well suited to this purpose. You may gain more flexibility in who and how this information is accessed as well!

Don’t forget that although cloud storage is generally very reliable, it can still be lost and should also be backed up. Stay tuned for another blog about how to back up your cloud data!