There are many factors which will potentially determine your best data backup strategy. Regardless of your companies size the thought process should be the same. The main factors to take into account are the amount of data being backed up, how quickly you need to backup and more importantly, how quickly you need to restore and the final factor will be the best data medium for you.

Put yourself in the shoes of Mr Unlucky, arriving at work to find, for what ever reason, all your data has been lost. All your customer database, accounts, stock levels and emails have been lost! How could you possibly recover from this and how long could your company stay in business? It is an agreed fact; if you do not backup your data and your data is lost a high percentage of businesses will cease to trade thereafter. Facts also show that those companies who do somehow initially continue to stay alive, 90% fail within two years. Believe me; you do not need to have a major catastrophe to wipe critical information. A disk failure, equipment failure or sudden loss of electricity can do it. Human error is a big factor and can potentially lead to lost servers or accidental deletion of data or major disasters such as, fires to floods and explosions (Bunsfield Oil Refinery), please do not forget malicious actions from crackers, viruses and loss of service attacks.

Another point we all agree on is not if you could lose data, it's when you will lose data. Although hardware infrastructure, software and peripheral network equipment easily can be replaced, the most valued asset, your data, cannot.

We have seen a growing number of government legislations, laws and regulations regarding data storage and privacy. All of which you are now accountable for. Much of this new law has been created because of identity theft as well as the unintentional or intentional posting of such sensitive data on the Internet. Like it or not, it's your responsibility to keep pace with all such laws, I cannot do into the legal aspect as it is a mine field and there are different laws for different types of Developing an Effective.

Data Backup Strategy

Now is the time to create a secure and manageable backup strategy. There is no point doing this after a disaster has struck, it is very minimize data loss and business losses whilst increasing business continuity. Your backup plan should be simple as possible, very specific whilst easy as possible to follow and must include all steps, starting with your initial requirements. You should include what data is critical and prioritize accordingly. How often you backup should not depend on the size or the nature of your company but you should base your solution around the following questions:-

1) Are you backing up a single server or many?

2) Are all your computers and servers located in a single office or do you have remote sites spread around the county?

3) Does your data change by only a few MB per week or by GB’s per day?

4) Is all of your data stored in a single server, or is your data spread around many servers?

5) Is your data simple file data which can be restored easily, or is it spread over various databases running on different operating systems?

6) Are you a 24 x 7 or 9 x 5 operation?

When you have answered the above, you are in a position to prepare a data backup and data recovery assessment which will addresses the following details:

1) What data needs protection? How much is active? How much is old and should be archived or how much data is duplicated or useless?

2) Most important question, what is your recovery window. In other words, how long can you survive without your data?

3) How much money will you lose for each day of downtime?

4) Is your proposed backup media reliable? Please bear in mind that backing up files does not mean you are able to restore your original data. For example, many companies have sought to recover data from backup tapes only to discover the tapes are corrupt or failed to record, and data is lost.

5) How flexible do you need you backup to be, is your data growing rapidly, does your data change a lot day by day?

Time Retention, how long do you need to save your data?
Many industries have to adhere to various laws which regulate or stipulate how long you must archive certain data. Other industries, including medical and legal, have their own data retention regulations mandated. Remember it is your companies responsibility to keep up to and adhere to these regulations and you must understand the legal consequences if you do not comply. As you can imagine consequences can be harsh which may include fines, sanctions or even orders to shut down your business. Such legal requirements are addressed by specific backup solutions.

What Is Your Backup Window?
How much time can you allocate to creating backups? Please take into account your schedule, should your backup take place hourly, daily, weekly or monthly? Remember, the more frequently you back up data, the less data you will lose and you can recover an closer to the exact copy of what you need. The greater the frequency of backup means greater hardware and software and management costs.

Costs
Costs should never be overlooked when creating your backup strategy. Your initial costs include hardware, software and, the backup media itself, don’t expect much change from £4,000, but don't forget the cost of managing your backup, over a 3 year period management will cost more than the actual data backup hardware and software put together.

Building a Data Protection Strategy
All data protection strategies contain three parts: the backup element, archive element and the recovery element. Let us start looking the backup element of the strategy. When building a backup plan you must view several factors, starting with management. Who will control and manage your backup procedure? Will it be a single administrator, you, or do have an IT team with set roles for managing and maintaining backups on a regular basis? Even if your backup solution is automated someone must be still be responsible for checking and maintaining your system. Without this clear system, your data backup will quickly become unusable.

Everything you have read details how an effective backup plan is carried out, as you can imagine this can be an expensive and time consuming task. To find out how your data backup solution can be achieved easily and affordably, please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk