Sign up now for our FREE newsletter and get all the latest tips and 
technology news plus exclusive info on our latest money saving offers.
Corporate data is as essential to running a business these days as staff and customers.
Yet, despite this, many organisations fail to backup their mission critical data regularly and of those that do, most neglect to test their backups to see if they can restore the data.
Every company that uses computer data should follow a few simple steps to determine their backup strategy.
The first of these is to make a list of the data you need to backup.
Even in situations where daily backups are made, a lot of organisations neglect to backup all their key areas, so by making a list of all your company's data, you will reduce the risk of suffering business disruption in the event of one of the following typical causes of data loss:-
Once you have compiled your data list, it might conceivably look something like this:-
The next step is to identify where this data is stored so we'll add a column to the list to note this down.
By understanding the impact on your business of losing each of these data areas, you can quantify how important it is to backup these different types of data and assign levels of importance and frequency to your backup schedule. Let's now add two more columns to establish the importance of each data area and determine how often it needs backing up.
There are many different ways to backup data these days including online / off site backup, portable media such as tape backup, data storage disk drive systems etc. Furthermore, there are different methodologies for backing up data on to each of these media including full backups, incremental backups, differential data backup and hard disk imaging using products such as Symantec Ghost or Acronis TrueImage.
These days there is a lot choice when it comes to the portable media and storage devices that you can use to store backup data. Some such as USB memory sticks only hold small amounts of data but most, including DAT and Ultrium tape drives, DVD R+/- writers, Network Access Storage (NAS) devices, USB hard drives and Continuous Data Protection appliances all are capable of holding gigabytes of files.
Cost often plays a role in determining the method people chose to backup their data so, in our example, we've chosen several different systems to demonstrate suitability.
| Data Source | Location | Importance | Frequency | Method | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | File server documents | File and print server | Critical | Daily | |
| 2 | My Documents | Various PC My Docs | |||
| 3 | Emails | Exchange Server | Critical | ||
| 4 | PC registries | ||||
| 5 | Active Directory | Both servers | |||
| 6 | Email archives | Individual PCs | High | Weekly | |
| 7 | SQL server data | Windows Server | |||
| 8 | Microsoft SharePoint Data | Windows server | Critical | ||
| 9 | Accounts data | Accounts PC | Critical | ||
| 10 | Comms equipment configs | file and print server | |||
| 11 | Web favourites | Individual PCs | Low | Monthly | DVD/USB stick |
After you've written your strategy, there only remains the task of implementing any required actions and assigning responsibility for your different backup tasks to individuals in your team. To help you further, here are some more:
Contact i-Zimbra today for more information on our data backup and recovery services and the protection and security they offer your business.
A Virtual Private Network, commonly known as a VPN, is a secure communications network which is carried over a public network but is securely encrypted … Read more about Virtual Private Networks >>
i-Zimbra's data cabling team have a vast experience in the installation of Cat5, Cat5e and Cat6 structured cabling systems as well as fibre optic installations … Read more about data cabling >>
In our experience, a badly designed wireless network is about as useful as no wireless network. We have witnessed and solved what happens when no thought has gone into a wireless system … Read more about wireless networks >>
See also:
Why not find out more about what we can do to help you and your business today?
To contact i-Zimbra, simply call us on 0870 10 10 150 or email us now.
Bookmark or share this page with your friends easily using this button:
Interested in our services? Leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
I use i-Zimbra for the maintenance and support of our own server and office systems. Whenever I need any help or support they are always there to assist and fix any problems. My business runs on our IT systems and i-Zimbra are always there for us.Martin K Augier
» Read all client testimonials
