Business Data Backup West Sacramento

A quick guide to business data backups in West Sacramento

When you think of businesses losing data, perhaps your first thought is cyberattacks. These certainly happen and it’s worth protecting yourself against them (for example by working with a managed IT security company) but most of the time, data loss is through accident rather than malice. This may not, however, be a great deal of comfort if you are the one losing crucial data. That’s why it’s important to stay on top of your business data backups. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to Business Data Backup West Sacramento.

Things To Be Considered For Business Data Backup

→ For the most part, online data backups are the only way to go

If you’re still running a data center, then there’s probably still a case for taking a local data backup to physical storage. Even in data centers, however, you probably want to use online data backups as well.

Given that you’re going to want an off-site data backup in any case, it makes sense to use an online data backup partly for convenience and speed (no more moving physical storage around) and partly because the public cloud can provide a cost-effective disaster recovery solution. It isn’t for everyone but it is becoming an increasingly attractive option. Keep reading to get Business Data Backup West Sacramento.

If you’re already in the cloud (public or private) then online data backups are probably going to be the only sensible option. You’ll probably also want to use the cloud for most, if not all of your data archiving, although there can be a bit of nuance in this.

→ Understanding storage in the cloud

In the world of data centers, you take your choice of storage (which, for practical purposes, means hard drives or tapes) and you buy enough of it to cover your requirements at that point.

Once you’ve made the purchase, the cost is sunk and it’s down to you whether or not you get a return on investment from it. Given that storage has been priced very economically for many years, there has been very little financial incentive for companies to minimize the volume of data they hold.

In the cloud, however, you pay for exactly what you use for exactly how long you use it. The word “exactly” is very important, because it highlights the fact that you can potentially save a lot of money by choosing the correct storage speed for different categories of data. Basically, from a financial perspective, you always want to use the slowest storage you possibly can. So you always want to ask yourself how long users can reasonably be expected to wait for their data and get Business Data Backup West Sacramento.

A lot of the time this depends on two key points. Firstly, is the data being used reactively or proactively? Secondly, is the data being used to service external customers or for internal purposes? If data is being used reactively, then, what is the service-level agreement/organization-level agreement for the task? The shorter it is, the faster your storage needs to be. If the data is being used proactively, then how far ahead can tasks be scheduled? Again, shorter lead times generally call for faster storage and vice versa.

Also, as a rule of thumb, any data which is used to service external customers should generally be given priority over any data which is used to service internal users, even if end customers do ultimately benefit (as they usually should).

Once you have worked out what sort of storage speed you need for your production data, then, you have essentially also worked out what your Recovery Time Objectives should be for different categories of data and hence can optimize your use of storage for your online data backups as well.

→ Remember that data archives are also supposed to be temporary storage

You should always move dormant data swiftly out of your production system. Ideally, it should be deleted unless there is a specific reason for keeping it, for example, compliance. If there is, then it should be put into a data archive. Remember, however, that data archives are also temporary storage, or at least they are supposed to be.

It is usually mandatory to delete sensitive data as soon as the compliance period has ended (and even if it’s not, it’s strongly-recommended practice). For other data, however, it’s an option, at least legally. In practical terms, however, if you use a data archive as a long-term dumping ground for data that never gets deleted, then the costs of storing it are going to start mounting up eventually for Business Data Backup West Sacramento.

If you encounter resistance to cleaning up your cloud archives, then you may want to consider keeping cloud archives for data that has a clear purpose but dumping everything else onto physical storage. That way you can still say it’s there and dig it out of the vaults if need be. Now, you can get Business Data Backup West Sacramento.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced business data backup services provider in West Sacramento, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.