Backup is an IT essential. Nobody will disagree. At least, not in 2019.
After the increasingly imaginative ways with which data is taken hostage, corrupted or lost in the recent times, we are now at a point where if you have a critical piece of information, you better have a copy of it somewhere.
Building on this idea, you need a clear backup strategy that not only stores a copy of your data but also provides means for you to recover them during different scenarios.
Any strategy is generally formed after your objectives are fixed. Same applies to backups.
This brings us to – Do you have a list of backup objectives you need to achieve as a part of your data protection strategy?
There are a few objectives (or parameters) recommended by industry experts. When you google backup objectives, you are likely to be bombarded with articles talking about RTO & RPO.
The truth is, it is more than just RTO & RPO.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO):
Maximum allowable time to restore the system to function. How quickly you want to restore your data is the first question you ask when discussing business continuity. If your system goes down at 9:00 AM and isn’t restored for 5-6 hours, it means you have just lost half a day’s business. Lower RTO equals lower downtime.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO):
The maximum allowable age of data that must be restored to resume operations after a data threat. If the system goes down at 9:00 AM, and you want to recover all the data at least from 8:45 AM, then your RPO is 15 minutes.
In other words, it is the maximum allowable time up to which you can afford data loss. That’s why, defining your RPO helps you in setting up a proper scheduling policy i.e., the frequency of backups.
3 – 2 – 1 Backup Strategy:
This is a strategy widely recommended across the world, describing how you should store your backup copies for a better chance against data loss.
The rule goes as follows: 3 copies of data stored on at least 2 different storage media with at least 1 copy stored offsite.
This way you have multiple copies of data on multiple storage media like disk and tape for immediate recovery & long term archiving, that can also help you with different kinds of retention.
And the offsite copy ensures you can restore your data even if your entire primary IT infrastructure goes down.
Data Prioritization:
While we focus on backing up and restoring data, in an organization all data is not equal.
Prioritize which data you want to backup more frequently, which data you want to restore as soon as possible and which data you want to store for long-term.
Based on the data type, department/team it is generated from and the need for recovery, the priority varies.
Disaster Recovery:
What happens if your backup server goes down? Considering the rise in data threats ranging from ransomware to natural disasters, it is clear that your backup server is not invincible against all forms of data loss.
This makes it a necessary step to have a secondary copy of your backup data offsite that can be used to restore the critical systems required to continue business operations.
We all know the scary statistic of the number of businesses that shut down after a disaster because they didn’t have a proper DR plan in place.
Along these lines, there are a few more objectives you need to define for your infrastructure to give an overall data protection strategy.
What follows after defining your objectives?
An action plan to achieve them.
That’s why we are hosting a webinar on How to achieve your backup objectives? Our experts will give you tips and best practices.
Reserve your spot and join us on August 22, Thursday at 11.00 AM PDT | 7.00 PM CET
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