If you can recall from my previous article, it is important to back up our data. Not just the data which we generally think about, but we need to search around and ensure we are getting copies of ALL valuable data in our business. We also discussed the need to backup as frequently as we can, and of some of the pitfalls which may occur.
This time, we'll press on and ask some more questions and examine some common best-practice strategies for small business.
How do we know we have a successful backup ?
After we have done a backup, there is generally a report produced showing statistics and any problems which may have occurred. Make a point of having a look at this report every day and ask your IT guy to explain it if it doesn't make sense. You should only need to look at one or two lines of the report to determine if there are any problems.
I like my clients to actually check on a monthly basis that the backup is working successfully as I have seen a major financial institute who only found out that their backups were reporting no faults, but actually failing, when they needed to retrieve data from a backup ! Get your IT guy to show you how to actually restore a file so you can see for yourself that there is real data on the backup. Too hard ? Ask him to do it once in a while, any check is better than thinking you have a backup and finding you don't.
How do we get our data back if we need it ?
Essentially, data that is successfully stored on your backup should be able to be retrieved any time in the next 10 years with a couple of provisos. One is that the backup is not overwritten by a later on (see next item) and secondly that what you are looking for has been backed up (see previous article and the point above).
Assuming that we have met that criteria there is an option in most (hopefully all) backup software to allow you to restore data. This simply reverses the backup process and copies data from the backup onto your system. A word of caution is necessary here. Unless you are 100% sure, get an IT person to do this for you, as it is generally an little complex and it can cause major grief if you accidently restore old data over current data by mistake.
Remember that you may need multiple tapes / disks if your daily backup spans more than one.
What options do we have to backup data ?
This is the more interesting part of the backup exercise and can be as simple or complex as you require, as there are many options. Let's understand a few of the terms used and see how they could apply to us.
In-house means that we are going to manage our own backups. We will buy the backup device/s and the backup media and the software. We will also put in new tapes each day and safely store the old tapes well away from the building (in case of fire or theft). One thing to consider is the cost of the hardware and software involved and compare it with the opportunity to ‘out source' this repetitive task which relies heavily on us to be successful. See the following ‘Remote' paragraph.
Remote (or offsite or managed) refers to backups of our data done by a remote organisation into their data centre. This is a relatively new process, it is reliable, secure, available at a low cost and should be seriously considered as it removes almost all of the human element - i.e. simple and reliable. I favour Australian based companies - if you can't find one, let me know and I'll provide some options.
Granularity of data is an important consideration. What we mean by this is if we use say 5 tapes (one for each night), we can go back one week in time to retrieve a lost or damaged file. Anything older than that is gone forever. Because of this, I always recommend a structured tape back which has 4 daily tapes (Monday - Thursday), 4 weekly tapes (Friday 1/2/3/4) and 12 monthly tapes (used on the last day of the month). In this way we can recall most of our files over the past 12 months and this is where the term granularity comes in. We can recall data from any day last week, any week last month and any month in the last year. A good practice to follow.
What are the ‘Golden Rules' regarding backup ?
Offsite - backing up data is good, getting it off-site is really good. The reason behind this is that, should you strike fire or flood, your tapes & and all your data) will be destroyed with your computer leaving you with no ability to recreate your systems.
Backup all data - every day we create new data. Do an audit of where it is being stored and ensure that all those places are covered by the backup processes.
Data retention strategy - decide how far back you may need to go to get a ‘good' version of a file. For example if you do monthly reports and you accidently deleted last month's copy, does your tape backup cycle go back that far, or can you only recall data that has been copied to the tapes for a week or two ?
Questions ?
I check the blog regularly (well, at least once a week) - ask a question and I'll get back to you soon. Remember the only dumb question is the one you don't ask !
