Is anyone paying attention to backups?

You’ve got a working BDR (Backup Disaster Recovery) system that’s backing up all your critical systems and you’re confident you can restore a file, a folder, an application or the whole system in a reasonable timeframe.  So now let’s make sure we don’t have any surprises.

Who and how is this being monitored?  A good solution will be automated but nothing should be taken for granted.  Are there logs or some kind of ticket alerting or emailing system to raise the alarm when something goes wrong? 

Something goes wrong…? Like what?

Storage can run low or run out.  Credentials can change or certificates can expire and cause services or backup agents to lose their connections.  File systems or applications can become corrupt and prevent some data from being backed up.  A backup job can be altered by mistake or maliciously causing some or all backups to stop or be incomplete.  Cloud connections can break, or performance issues may cause backups to take so long as to never completely finish.  The list goes on and on.

You need a sophisticated logging and alerting system that is monitored by more than one person.  And you need to regularly verify your backups can be recovered with some kind of “test restore” that demonstrates the integrity of backups.

All too often we see new customers that missed these steps, and they find out too late that backups weren’t done as they expected, and when they needed them. 

Talk to your IT department or professional provider about how your backups are monitored and what the frequency and process is for validation.  And feel free to contact CCI if you would like an independent verification done!