“We help people, so if our only server goes down, it affects our clients who are in critical need,” Nate Meek, former network and system administrator for JF&CS, tells BizTech.
To prepare for any eventuality, Meek chose to replace a less automated solution with VMware vSAN, a hyperconverged infrastructure that also allowed the organization to move its backup and recovery systems off-premises and away from its four offices.
“A few years ago, we would do backups every night; then, once a week, we’d take those tapes home,” Meek explains. “Today, we still use tape backup, but we also replicate the backup to one of our offices, so we have survivability in case something happens.”
3. Better Backup Reduces Downtime
Unexpected downtime can strike at any time, even without a disaster, which is a daunting prospect for companies with small IT teams. This was the case for N.J.-based Roysons, a provider of coating and lamination services.
“Local storage was our bottleneck,” Roysons’ IT Director Vipul Bosmiya tells BizTech of the company’s inability to spin up new virtual machines or replicate data in its on-premises data center. “If something went wrong with the storage, we could be down for a significant period of time. We needed data protection and a good backup solution for the company.”
Roysons was able to improve data protection as well as storage by tapping a new Dell EMC Unity 300 SAN solution along with VMWare’s vMotion, which moves workloads seamlessly, adds redundancy to data storage and reduces downtime associated with maintenance or upgrades.
How Businesses Can Boost Backup and Recovery Efforts
So, what can businesses do to make sure they’re able to get data back if the other shoe drops?
“Organizations should consider all aspects of the backup strategy, including nontraditional backup functionality provided as part of other solutions, such as security and compliance solutions,” advises Zix’s Bauckman.
Bauckman offers several tips to businesses looking to equip themselves with robust backup systems and plans:
- Begin by defining a backup continuity plan. The plan should outline how companies will continue to function as a business during an outage, before they’re able to use a backup system to restore.
- Weigh the options. “Companies should look at each of the business-critical products or services they use and evaluate what capabilities each provides to assist with business continuity and recovery,” Bauckman says.
- Review plans on a regular basis. “To the extent possible, the business continuity and backup plan should be tested to make sure it will actually work as expected during an outage,” she says. Additionally, companies should always be on the lookout for new products and services and shouldn’t be afraid to upgrade if better systems come to market.