A failed drive, ransomware incident, accidental deletion or physical disaster can make business data unavailable with little warning. A backup strategy reduces that risk, but a copy of the data is only one part of recovery planning.
Backup and disaster recovery are different
A backup is a recoverable copy of data. Disaster recovery is the process, technology and responsibility required to restore systems and resume operations. A business can have successful backup jobs and still discover during an incident that recovery takes longer than expected or that an important system was not included.
A practical backup strategy
- Automatic backups: Reduce dependence on someone remembering to copy critical data.
- Local and off-site protection: Avoid keeping every recoverable copy in the same physical or logical failure domain.
- Monitoring and verification: Review backup jobs and investigate failures rather than assuming a completed schedule means every recovery will work.
- Recovery testing: Periodically test the recovery process at a level appropriate to the system and agreement.
- Business priorities: Identify which systems and data need to be restored first.
Recovery objectives should be defined, not assumed
How quickly a business can recover depends on the backup architecture, system size, available infrastructure, connectivity and the recovery objectives defined for the environment. Specific recovery-time or recovery-point commitments should be documented in the applicable design or service agreement.
CompFlorida's approach
For managed IT environments, CompFlorida normally recommends both local and off-site backup. Depending on scope, services can include backup-job monitoring, verification, recovery testing and coordination of recovery resources. Broader disaster-recovery and business-continuity planning can be designed around the operational requirements of the business.