Best Data Backup Services West Sacramento

Things To Know About Data Backup Services West Sacramento

In business as in life, it’s great to hope for the best, but, as the old saying goes, “hope is not a strategy”, so you need to be prepared for the worst. Having a robust data backup strategy in place is an integral part of preparing for the sort of issues that can impact businesses of all sizes, especially SMBs. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about data backup services in West Sacramento.

Functions Of Data Backup Services

1. Understanding data backups

Data backups are a snapshot of your production (i.e. active) data. They are used to replace data that has been corrupted or lost. Every time you take a snapshot of your data, you use up resources. This has a cost even in a data center environment and in the cloud, it is even easier to see the direct correlation between taking a data backup and paying for the resources used. As a result, businesses need to define at least one recovery point objective for their data.

Essentially, a recovery point objective defines how much data you are prepared to risk losing, in other words, how often you need to take data backups. In a data center, you would generally tend to have one RPO for all your data. In the cloud, by contrast, it’s much more feasible to implement different RPOs for different categories of data.

2. Data backups versus data archives

You should only ever backup data that is actually in active use (i.e. production data). Data that is dormant needs to be either deleted or moved into an archive – in that order of preference. Data archives are places to store data that is needed rather than wanted (for example data that has to be stored for compliance purposes) or which is wanted but is unlikely to be needed urgently (for example data that is being stored out of historical interest).

Most, if not all, data will start out as production data and then become dormant, at which point it needs to be either deleted or archived until it either must or can be deleted. Usually, sensitive data must be deleted unless it is specifically needed for compliance purposes, in which case it must be deleted as soon as the relevant compliance period has ended.

Some general data will need to be kept for compliance purposes (e.g. tax-relevant data) but it is usually up to you whether or not you then go on to delete it. As a rule of thumb, this is generally the best option, unless you really value it for historical interest.

Managing a data item’s transition(s) through its life cycle is important for several reasons. The most important is that it is essential to stay in compliance with the law. Right behind this, however, is the fact that it is also essential to manage costs. Backing up data that belongs in an archive increases the volume of bandwidth and storage you need. What’s more, you’ll be paying for fast storage, instead of the slow storage which is perfectly suitable for data archives.

3. Data backups and disaster recovery plans

Data backups are a fundamental part of any disaster recovery plan and it can be helpful to keep this in mind when considering what approach to use to taking them. As a rule of thumb, regardless of your operating environment, you want to aim to follow the long-established 3-2-1 principle. This means having three copies of your data over two media with one copy being kept off-site.

In just about all cases, it makes sense to use the cloud for your off-site backup as this makes for the quickest and most convenient restores regardless of whether you are restoring to your main system or to your disaster recovery location.

If you are in a data center or a public cloud, then it usually makes the most sense to store your data backups in a public cloud, albeit for different reasons. If you’re running a data center then you presumably can’t (or don’t want to) use a cloud for disaster recovery and if you’re in a public cloud then you’re presumably quite happy just to use a second public cloud both as storage for your data backups and as a disaster recovery solution.

If you’re in a private cloud, then you may still be able to use the public cloud as a disaster recovery solution, even if you’re storing sensitive data. If not, or if that idea just makes you too uncomfortable, you can still use it to store your data backups and then connect it with your disaster recovery private cloud. Alternatively, you could just store your data backups in your disaster recovery cloud. This last option is generally the most expensive but makes for simpler architecture and quicker switches to your secondary location.

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

Data Backup Services Sacramento