The Three Biggest Misconceptions Businesses Have Regarding Backups and Disaster Recovery
Companies understand they need to backup their data and often they do have some type of backup and disaster recovery solution in place. However, many times it is not adequate and companies only find out about the problems after a network crash in which all their data is lost.
Misconception #1: My Data is Secure on Tape Backups. Wrong! Tape backups have a failure rate approaching 100% (yes you read that right – 100%) What’s even worse is tape backups will APPEAR to be functioning, giving your company a false sense of security. You will only discover you’ve lost everything when you attempt to recover data after a catastrophe.
Misconception #2: Backing Up Your Data Will Permit You To Rapidly Restore Your Network To Its Original State. This is a SERIOUS misunderstanding.Possessing a copy of your data doesn’t guarantee this at all – something many business owners don’t realize until they have to restore the data. To help you understand this idea, let’s consider a simple example…
Let’s assume we made an exact replica of all the goods in your home at this moment and placed them in an off site in a storage facility – that’s equivalent to a backup of your “data.” If you had a fire and your home burned down, we would have to build a new HOUSE (think the server, software and supporting environment) BEFORE we could transport your goods back from storage. Obviously this will all take some time.
That’s the reason why having an off site copy of your data doesn’t mean you’ll be up and running fast after a crash or disaster. It could take several or possibly weeks before everything was restored and repaired; and that’s if you HAVE the data in a clean state and all the originally installed software.
Misconception #3: I Can Trust My Backup Just WORKS without doing periodic test restores. This often happens as a business owner thinks their backups are functioning properly because they don’t see any error messages or apparent issues. Unfortunately when a file restoration is needed, they find out the backups stopped working months ago and they don’t have any current data. The reality is that you need to monitor and periodically conduct restore testing on a regular basis to ensure your backup and disaster recovery solution is 100% solid.