Backup Strategies and Plans - A Couple of Examples

 

You gotta have a strategery. We can all agree that we need to Back Things Up in the most comprehensive way possible. But in order to achieve our goal of business continuity, we need a plan, and that involves both people and process. In other words, someone has to be responsible for the task and there must be a tried-and-tested process to serve as a guide to action. Here are some examples:

 

Plan 1: On-site/Off-Site

  1. A rolling seven-day backup guarantees that the system that you're backing up has at least the entire history of the last week available for retrieval. Thus, if you needed a file that you accidentally erased last Tuesday, you could retrieve it without difficulty.

  2. Off-site Archive - Use a managed service like Remote Data Backups to ensure that your data is safely stored off-site. Also perform your own backup weekly and after every significant financial event - you take the backup of that event and copy it off to semi-permanent storage like CD or DVD. This is taken off-premises and stored in a safe place. Think of it as a backup to a backup.

  3. Verification - Backups are tested for reliability once a month. Data integrity checks are enabled for the backup process itself.

Plan 2: On-site/Off-Site

 

  1. A rolling thirty-day backup guarantees  that the system that you're backing up has at least the entire history of the last month available for retrieval. Thus, if you needed a file that you accidentally erased three weeks ago, you could retrieve it without difficulty.

  2. Off-site Archive -  Use a managed service like Remote Data Backups to ensure that your data is safely stored off-site. As a 'backup to the backup', every day, and after every significant financial event,

    • You have a second external hard drive to which you copy the entire contents of the main backup drive. This is taken off-premises each and every day.

    • You take the backup of that event and copy it off to semi-permanent storage like CD or DVD. This is taken off-premises and stored in a safe place.

  3. Verification - Backups are tested for reliability once a week. Data integrity checks are enabled for the backup process itself.
Plan 9 from Outer Space Backups? What backups?

 

These examples serve to illustrate just two typical backup strategies - there are many variations on these themes. The backup strategy and technology appropriate for your business may vary considerably from these examples. Notice that the first two incorporate off-site storage and a periodic reliability test. This ensures that your backup systems are doing what they're supposed to do, and that the real heart of your business information systems won't burn down with the building. And if you're using some variation of  Plan 9, we need to talk.

 

And here's what a sample backup policy and plan might look like:

 

 

 

StarLAN Consulting Services offers a variety of automated and reliable backup and restoration systems that will scale to fit your business continuity needs. We also offer consulting services aimed specifically at producing a practical and effective disaster recovery plan. Please contact us for a free assessment of your needs.

 

The products shown below on this page are representative of a general range of solutions. The one that fits your enterprise will look somewhat similar to the items shown below, but will almost certainly vary according to your needs.