Blog / Debunking Data Backup Myths
When it comes to data backups, don’t fall for simple solutions.
By now the importance of backing up your data is pretty common knowledge, and there are plenty of good reasons for it. However, as with all things important these days, it seems like there’s just as much misinformation floating around as there is reliable, quality advice. That’s why we decided to use this week to talk about four common data backup myths that people fall for all too often.
Disaster recovery is the same as backing up data
Although both backing up your data and having a recovery plan are essential for business continuity efforts, they are not the same thing. It’s an understandable error to make, as the former is integral to the latter, but it’s important to know the difference.
Simply put, backing up means creating at least one copy of your primary critical data, whereas data recovery is all about putting those backups to work after an incident. For those more technical minded project manager-types out there, the two can also be distinguished by their differing business objectives; data backup is associated with how much data is needed to keep things running, knowns as the Recovery Point Objective or RPO, while disaster recovery concerns itself with the recovery time objective, or RTO, and how long it takes to get back on your feet.
One backup is plenty
While it might be acceptable to stash away only a single personal backup at home, SMBs and other organizations need to keep multiple backups of their data. In fact, you should be following Peter Krogh’s famous 3-2-1 rule. Plenty has been written on the topic, but in a nutshell you should have three copies of your data (including your primary), with your two backups kept on separate storage mediums (one in the cloud and one on a USB drive, for example) and at least one of them is offsite (in case things go south at the office and not your database).
Multiple backups guarantee safety
Having multiple copies of your data is great, but even with two copies there are no guarantees. Data can get corrupted and USB drives lost, so it’s important to be proactive and understand that even your backups need a bit of maintenance. Make sure to regularly verify your backups, and to update your offline, offsite backup to keep it current as well. There’s more than one recovery horror story out there starring one broken backup and another that’s out-of-date.
Backing up data is expensive
It’s a little bit alarming that this one is still floating around out there, but the costs of storing backups is incredibly small compared to the costs incurred by downtime, lost productivity, lost revenue, and the tarnished image caused by crashed systems that can’t be recovered. Moreover, data storage costs have come down incredibly over the last several years, so the additional cost of keeping even two backups is often insignificant. Don’t risk your data just to save a few dollars.
These are just a few of the more persistent and pernicious data backup myths that we often hear, and there’s plenty more out there. That’s why it’s so important to have an IT professional who knows what they’re doing help. If you’d like to learn more about data backups and how we can help, contact TRINUS today.
Sincerely,
The TRINUS Team
trinustech.com
