At Mnemonic, we will guide you through the key steps in planning for your backup and disaster recovery and make sure that all your users know what to do after a major disaster to continue working:
- DATA: Identify the data to be backed up and choose the destinations for local and online, in addition to making sure you have redundancy in-house to protect that data
- FREQUENCY/RETENTION: Determine how often this data must be backed up and for how long it must be kept alive
- MONITOR: Be alerted of failures that could be detrimental to recovery
- RECOVERY TIME: Determine what is an acceptable recovery period, then identify both the flat data (word, excel, pdf, etc) and program (SQL Database, propriety database, etc.) timeline recovery and choose a plan based on the budget
- PLAN: Write out a disaster recovery plan and prepare instructions for the staff
- TESTING SCHEDULE: Setup a testing schedule to implement a disaster scenario
“There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.” Stephen King, Different Seasons
How prepared are you in your backup and disaster recovery? Remember, disaster doesn’t necessarily mean a natural one, it could be a hardware failure or theft. We all think it will not happen to us, but as the old saying goes, better safe than sorry. Data is the driving engine of many businesses and the lack of it could be detrimental.
According to the Red Cross, 40 percent of small businesses are so devastated after a major natural disaster that once they shut down, they never reopen
To help you understand your current situation, here are some questions that will help you determine how prepared you are:
- How often (daily, weekly, monthly) is your backup taking place?
- How do you know of a backup failure?
- Are you using tape backup or a USB hard drive, cloud, NAS or SAN?
- Do you have redundant backups?
- What is your retention period?
- Do you have a monthly/yearly archive and if so, how far back does it go?
- If you were hit with Ransomware that encrypted all your files, how can you get back in business quickly? Note, this is especially important when it comes to cloud hosted files.
- How old is your backup drive?
- When was the last time someone tested restoring data from the drive?
- Do you have support with your backup vendor and are you getting the updates and upgrades to stay current?
- Do you have an offsite backup solution?
- If there is a disaster and you lose your servers, what kind of restore capabilities do you have?
- How quickly can you access essential files after a major disaster?
- How quickly can you get fully operational after a major disaster?
- Does the staff know what to do after a disaster?
- If you using a Cloud solution, have you checked their Disaster Recovery Plan?
- If using a cloud solution, what kind of backup do you have with the solution?
- If using a cloud solution and imaging your servers, do you know if these images can spin up?
- If your office is inaccessible, do you have a computer at home that can be setup to access some or all the required programs and files?
- Do you have a written disaster recovery plan in place?
You or your IT support should be able to answer all of these questions with confidence. If not, then you are not fully prepared. We offer a free backup audit and offer you solutions. Here is a little explainer on one of our solutions:
We don’t subscribe to the philosophy of fear for sales, but instead to rational thinking and educating our clients, we do realize that in California we are way overdue for a big quake and businesses need to be savvy about this real threat and plan accordingly. Here are some notable quotes that must be taken seriously.
“The truth is we just don’t know when the next big earthquake along the San Andreas Fault will be. It could be tomorrow or 10 years from now. However, we can say with a good deal of confidence that the area is primed for a large earthquake with devastating potential. Now is the time to upgrade infrastructure, early warning systems, and education on earthquake preparedness before it’s too late”
-Trevor Nace is a geologist, Forbes contributor
“The USGS adjusted its big-quake forecast, hiking its estimate on the chances of an 8.0 earthquake in California in the next 30 years from 4.7% to 7%” – Joseph Serna, LA Times