Considerations for Choosing a Backup System

Protecting data by having a reliable backup solution in place ranks high on any IT professional’s list of critical “must have” network technologies, and it should be on yours as well. With all of the backup options available today, how do you go about selecting the solution that best fits your needs and budget? Have you considered your network infrastructure and your recovery needs? It’s not as difficult or as overwhelming a task as you may think if you just start by answering a few simple questions.

• Determine What You Need to Backup

Are you backing up just servers, or do you also have to contend with backing up PCs or even laptops that may not always be connected to your network? In most cases, the most critical data will reside on your servers so the next question is, are your servers physical or virtual servers? Most current backup solutions have the capability of backing up both, and also have some capacity to backup end user systems as well, if that is absolutely necessary. Virtualization of your server environment will provide you with much greater options and flexibility for backup and recovery, and over time should be less expensive. If you think you will be virtualizing your servers within the next few years, you should base your backup solution around that projection, to be sure that what you choose will also make sense once your environment is virtualized.

• Recovery Time Objective

How long can your organization afford to be down in the event an entire system requires recovery? While your initial response may be “none” or “very short”, you need to be realistic about this response because the shorter the timeframe for recovery that you require, the more costly the solution will be. If your
“disaster” is one of a non-catastrophic nature where the failure is only within your server environment and not a physical disaster at a location where hardware needs to be replaced, systems can be restored within minutes of complete failure. However, this type of solution will come at great cost. On average in this type of scenario, one to two days of downtime is generally acceptable and will allow you to purchase a solution affordable to most.

• Recovery Point Objective

How much time are you willing to lose in the event of a failure? This basically translates into how often you
need to back up your data. Most organizations backup at least once per day, and generally at night, so in the event that hardware or software fails causing data loss during the course of a day, you could restore your data from the previous night’s backup and only lose anything that had been done during that day. Is this acceptable to you in your environment or in your line of work? If not, how many times per day would you need to back up your data? There are systems that can perform a backup as frequently as every ten minutes. This type of solution would be more expensive but generally won’t break the bank and is affordable for most organizations that require this sort of recoverability.

• Archive/Retention

How far back in time do you need to retain your backup files? And at what interval do you need to retain copies of your full backups? While storage is fairly affordable these days, if long-term, frequent, full backup archival is necessary, this can drive the cost of the solution up significantly.

• Cost/Budget

Does your budget afford you the luxury of purchasing a solution outright, or would a year
to year, or a month to month payment schedule work best for you? The latter costs more in the long run, but allows the acquisition of an otherwise unaffordable sophisticated backup solution.

• Disaster Recovery and Security

All backup solutions are at the heart of any good disaster recovery solution. How does your backup solution line up with your defined disaster recovery objectives? Are copies of your backups being maintained off-site, or are they replicated to cloud storage? If so, is your backup data secure whether it resides on or offsite? Does the media and/or technology you’re using allow backup data to be encrypted?

Your Backup Technology Options...

There are many options for backing up your data and there is no “one size fits all” solution. What makes sense for one organization could be completely wrong for another. It is only by answering the questions above that you will begin to understand what your best solution may be.

With the plethora of options available, it is advisable to consult with a qualified IT professional to assess your needs, and provide you with a solution that not only meets your budget, but more importantly meets your data backup and disaster recovery objectives. Contact bgrublis@md-cpas.com to explore the implications for your organization.