It’s that time of year again!

It’s that time of year again! Hurricane season is upon us and it’s time to review your company’s IT Backup Plan.

In reviewing your corporate plan, you must consider what risks you are willing to take with your data—in particular, what data is most critical and what level of loss you want to be prepared to face.

Next, you need to review the media that you are using. The questions you need to ask yourself or your staff are as follows:

• Is this media (tape, hard drives, etc.) still appropriate for the amount of data that I need to backup?
• When was the last time we tried to restore from a backup?
• Where are the copies of this media being stored – both locally and off-site?

Once the above are addressed, you should also review the frequency that your backups are being performed. Your plan most likely follows one of the following schedules:

• Full Backup: In a full backup, all network data is backed up. If you have to restore data after a crash you only have one set of media to restore from.

• Incremental Backup: In an incremental backup, only the files that have changed since the previous day’s backup are backed up. Each day’s backup is a different size because a different number of files are modified each day.

• Differential Backup: In a differential backup a full backup is done once a week. Every night, for the next six nights, the backup utility backups up all files that have changed since the last full backup. After a week’s worth of differential backups, another full backup is done, starting the cycle all over again. To restore data you use two backup sessions to restore files and folders.

The last item to consider is whether to incorporate an online backup solution into your strategy. We invite you to read the following article on this topic to gain a better understanding.

We recommend to all our clients that they conduct an annual review of their backup plan and procedures. We are always available to answer any questions that you may have, as well as to assist you with the above review.

If you have any questions or comments, please call us at 682-4990 or Email Us.