In the modern world, the use of cloud-based managed backup services has not only become a necessity, but also a savior for many small and mid-sized businesses.
Imagine that all the data in your database just vanishes. Your client would not care whether it was an unfortunate server breakdown or a careless mistake by the server administrator. The blame will still fall on you. Not only will you incur financial penalties, but you may also be looking at lawsuits.
Implementing backups in-house by your own employees is well. But imagine if the backup on the same server or a different server in the vicinity suffers some damage. Those backups would be of no use to you or your client. In situations like these, Managed Backup services can truly be a savior.
What Is Managed Backup?
Managed backup is a service, usually provided by a third party that takes routine backups of your important data to their cloud servers and helps you avert such a crisis. Managed backup services are usually customizable, enabling you to choose the data to be backed up and at what intervals. You can also access these data and restore them at any time.
Aside from peace of mind that the service brings in having several copies of your data that, managed backup offers other benefits such as:
- Lower costs
- Access to experts
- Layers of protection
- Scalability
More than just Cloud Storage
Cloud storage only stores the data that you upload. These data are for different purposes, like file sharing and collaboration, viewing, saving space on your local hard drive, and of course for backup.
Meanwhile, managed backup has a completely different purpose and offers more benefits. Firstly, it does not require the user to upload the files manually. The service provider is responsible for automatically uploading all your business data to the cloud server at specific periods. Secondly, a managed backup service is meant to be far more secure than regular in-house cloud storage servers, so that the backups cannot be stolen by competitors or hackers.
Lastly, a managed backup service backs up the files using different architectures, such as a grandfather-father-son architecture. This means that the first set of data are backed up, then a copy of a more updated version is made after a certain interval. After the third iteration of a backup, the first backup is deleted and the latest one is added. This allows the user to have three different restore points for their data, meaning that they can access a previous version of their backup in case something goes wrong to the current iteration.
Best Backup Practices
When deciding to employ managed backup services, certain factors need to be considered to minimize costs and maximize throughput. What are the best practices in managed backup services?
Have Clear Requirements
Know when and how much to back up. For businesses such as banks, making backups of the data every 15 minutes might be a reasonable system. For a small data-entry company, however, it might not be a viable solution. Learn to understand your own needs.
Determine the Backup Frequency
Learn to analyze and figure out the interval between two backups. How much data can you afford to lose if something goes wrong? Is one day’s worth of data loss is acceptable for your business? For example, a data-entry business where one day’s worth of data can easily be reentered with some overtime, frequency can be set to daily backups. If you can live with weekly backups such as a car dealership that doesn’t sell more than one or two cars a day, leading to 14 entries a week at maximum, go for a weekly backup instead.
Set the Restore Points
Choose a service provider that offers multiple file versioning and can track the changes made. Sometimes, you might need to revert to the previous data due to some mishap. In such a situation, you might opt to set a 3-2-1 restore point. However, if you don’t deal with old data at all, you can save up some money by not setting up restore points at all.
To ease all your worries about data losses, NST offers a fully automated and customized managed backup service hosted in Australia. Fully customizable, automated, and secure, NST’s backup service simplifies and improves backup solutions. The agentless software collects data from all your devices, encrypts it, and backs it up at a scheduled time. File recovery is quick and simple, and performed by our service desk. Interested? Contact NST today.