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Everyone with a computer fears that fateful day when their computer fails to boot. It eventually happens to all computers, Windows systems, Linux systems, and even Mac systems. It is just a matter of time before software or hardware becomes corrupt and data loss ensues. Have you considered the fiscal crisis that might arise in your organization with a system failure? Depending on the system, it could be a minor inconvenience or a shut-the-doors-and-find-another-job kind of experience.
Being in the technology field for decades, our team has heard their fair share of horror stories. We’ve seen systems failures cost an organization a few hundred dollars to several hundred thousand dollars as well as lost revenue, lost productivity, and lost opportunity. Not to mention the loss of data that just can’t be recreated. We’ve helped clients recover from such catastrophic scenarios, but the situation can truly be devastating to an organization.
We are all creators of hope. We believe that the bad stuff will never happen to us, and so we keep moving about our days getting work done and hoping that the horror of data loss will pass us by. There are better solutions, and while it requires attention and resources it will help you sleep at night.
Solution 1: Onsite Backup
There are many solutions in the market that provide onsite backup. The cost depends on the product’s automation, redundancy, and capacity. The benefit to this solution is that your data is onsite and available as needed for recovery. The problem here is that it doesn’t always scale well and can take a ton of time to backup or restore depending on the storage size and media being used. If you need a quick restoration solution, this is the way to go. However, be aware that this solution doesn’t help if the building burns down. Cost can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a quality disk backup to tens of thousands of dollars for high-end systems.
Solution 2: Cloud Backup
The Cloud (a.k.a. the Internet) has grown as a powerful and affordable method to backup everything from desktops to servers. Several companies, like Carbonite and Mozy, have established themselves as affordable entry level solutions. They have very low cost-of-entry and high scalability with systems that automatically backup in real time to assure little to no data loss. Files are available online as needed and systems are easy to backup and recover as needed. Cloud backup also comes in many flavors and capabilities. Costs per year can run anywhere from just a few dollars for a workstation to a couple hundred dollars for a server to several thousand dollars for a network depending on service and capabilities.
Solution 3: Onsite and Cloud Backup with Virtualization
For those who need local reliability as well as cloud peace-of-mind there are systems available that provide the best of both worlds. Local hardware provides onsite backup and storage and real-time or daily cloud backups to assure that, if you have a minor hiccup in the office, you can easily get back up and running. The cloud provides the peace-of-mind that if your office burns down, or a natural disaster wipes out your city, everything survives in the cloud. On top of this high redundancy, there are systems that will actually allow you to run your business in a virtual environment from your onsite or cloud backups as though nothing ever happened to the hardware. You can quite literally have your office burn to the ground and within a few minutes be back up and running via a virtual environment as though nothing ever happened. This gives you not only the protection of your data, but the ability to minimize any downtime created by loss and to keep your business humming while you rebuild the physical environment. These services are now much cheaper than you might think and the total protection, peace-of-mind, and recoverability of these systems can be the difference between a minor inconvenience and finding a new career.
Conclusion
That’s a lot to digest! The main point is that you can implement a very affordable solution to provide basic data protection for your organization. Depending on your organization’s needs, you can have an affordable, total protection strategy to avoid the most catastrophic events. How well are you prepared for disaster recovery? Today is a good day to take the first step. Need help deciding which solution is right for your organization? We can help…contact us today for a free backup analysis!
