Mobile Computing : Backups revisited including test restores

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Tue 07 of Sept., 2010 02:58 EST

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Backups revisited including test restores
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Possibly the most important part of your IT system is your backup. Don't take this for granted. It's very important that you take responsibility to ensure you have a sound backup system in place, and that it continues to work.

A good backup has the following characteristics:

It includes all your important data - most sites are backing up their databases but often not including things like documents and e-mail.
It is as automated as possible - let's take the possibility of human error out of the equation.
It does not rely on proprietary software or file formats that can be difficult to access in an emergency.
It is checked, every time - we suggest an e-mail system that verifies the backup and reports to you by e-mail.
It is off-site and secure - we suggest encrypting the backup and removing it from the site every day.
It is serial - this means you are keeping "point in time" backups for as long as possible. In the event of data corruption or legal proceedings, it may be critically important to have access to these older backups. We recommend a daily (or more often) backup to re-writable media and a weekly backup to write once media like DVD+R.
It is restorable - we recommend full test restores at least twice per year or whenever there is a significant change.

If you have a monolithic server (one that does just about everything) it's important that you backup up the entire system regularly in addition to your data backups.

In the event of a failure, even though your data may be safe, it can take days to reconfigure everything on a server!

A snapshot backup of the entire system cuts this process down to minutes. We strongly recommend a snapshot backup running on an external hard disk, using snapshot software like the very affordable Drive Snapshot. In the event of an emergency, it's easy to take this drive off-site and have an entire backup safely in your possession.

On-line backups are an option being explored by some as Internet speeds improve. We have a number of on-line backups running as a secondary protection for clients. An important factor to consider is the location of the provider – if your backup is several hundred megabytes in size it may take many hours to retrieve.

Our technicians are equipped with test restore servers on their notebooks, and can perform a secure test restore for you on-site. We can also improve your backup to include any or all of the suggestions discussed in this article.

In the event of a failure, even though your data may be safe, it can take days to reconfigure everything on a server!

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