Save your data, save your business!
I know the title of my white paper sounds a bit like the TV show Heroes and the catchphrase from the first season, “Save the cheerleader, save the world”, but I wanted to express how important proper data backup is and a disaster recovery plan. to the success and sustainability of your business. Every day I talk to small and medium business owners and technology decision makers who have outdated or non-existent data backup plans. Some examples include an organization that was backing up its memorable network data to tape only to find that its “tape” was actually the head cleaner; and a manufacturer that had all its critical data stored on a networked PC sitting on the floor, and then a flood carried three feet of water through its facility. In both examples, organizations lost large amounts of irreplaceable data.
These are just two examples out of dozens I have come across in the last decade as a consultant. The proliferation of data has made it more crucial than ever to protect it. In 2007, Jeremy Kirk estimated that the amount of data generated by devices of all kinds, including digital cameras and computer systems, was comparable to the amount of grains of sand on all the world’s beaches. An amazing concept made even more incredible by the fact that 60% of that data flowed through corporate and business networks. Small businesses would have a hard time keeping up with that tidal wave, let alone protecting it.
Data is taking up more and more space on local machines and servers, and some of it is crucial to the daily operation of many SMBs. But as shown above, many businesses are unaware of this criticality, or may even be stubbornly set in the “it can’t happen to my business” mentality. The example I talked about in the first paragraph actually happened, and for a business owner or technology decision maker to bury their heads in the sand is incredibly short-sighted and unnecessarily risky. There are specific ways for an SMB to take stock of what it’s doing, and then it becomes critical to build a solid disaster recovery plan around your scheduled backup policies.
Less than two years ago, AT&T conducted a comprehensive survey of the SMB space and found some initial results. According to the study, while 9 out of 10 small businesses said they backed up their data, only 7% took the extra precaution of sending backups off-site. Of those who used on-premises solutions, many still relied on the old-fashioned tape drive method. In these situations, I always like to grill a decision maker who swears by their tape backups. I ask them if they have an 8-track player in their vehicle, and they often laugh and say of course not. They have a CD player. I then ask if they have a VCR as their primary source for recording and playing back TV shows or movies. This elicits a similar laugh and they explain that they do, in fact, have a DVR and/or DVD player. With that said, I ask why you are using outdated technology to protect your business’s greatest asset, your data! Reactions range from self-conscious embarrassment to angry rebuttals.
Either way, I think the point is critical. The SME that takes the appropriate measures will avoid being a statistic. I am referring to the fact that 94% of companies that suffer a catastrophic data loss will never survive. Even if backups are made, remember that 71% of tape backups fail when trying to restore data. So what can you do to strengthen your plan?
As you can see from the above, I am not a fan of tape solutions as the primary source for backing up critical information. However, I do see value in tape as a second line of defense, such as for archival purposes. There are more efficient and reliable methods to secure company information, both in the short and long term. Many SMBs have invested in CD or DVD burners to permanently seal data onto physical media. Others have gone to an external hard drive connected directly to the company server. Both are surely improvements over the tape method, but they are limited in their ability in terms of fast restore. Not to mention that they fall short in geographic diversity, since they are directly attached to the network. They also do not have the ability to aggregate data from individual PCs connected to the network.
The header would be a solution that uses the organization’s Internet bandwidth and an external receptacle for data storage. Continuous Data Protection, or CDP, is the first method of its kind. It started out much like the external hard drive, with wire-speed transfer of all data as it was generated. This data was sent to a device connected directly to the corporate network. In this way, you can get almost instant recovery of lost files and information. Have you ever been working on a document, spreadsheet, or other project and suddenly experienced a program crash that cost you all your work? If corporate backups are done the night before, there is no backup file that can save it. However, the CDP solution mitigates the loss by offering as close a real-time backup as possible, so that program crashing doesn’t cost you hours of work. In many cases, recovery is as simple as point and click.
The implementation of CDP and related solutions has evolved into a more secure remote backup scenario. By performing the same backups over the Internet to a remote device or array, you get the added security of not storing your data on-site in the event of a disaster or theft. The SonicWALL CDP appliance in its early form had this option, sending the data to its data center in San Francisco, as well as an agent that can do a full “bare-metal” backup of a server or the entire contents of a PC, including programs and operation. systems In addition, there are software solutions such as CA’s ArcServe line. Many IT companies have started to offer it as a managed service offering and in some cases as part of a complete managed environment offering as an essential module for managing an SMB network by a trusted partner.
No matter what the decision is about hardware, software or services, the key must be planning and thinking. Nobody likes to think about what could happen in an emergency, it’s just not a comfortable and happy place for many people. Many small business owners just go their own way, fingers crossed behind their backs. This can be a fatal misstep. A short article in August 2008 by tech journalist Ed Bott really summed up the four crucial steps you need to get down on paper and prepare for:
1. Know what your data is worth
2. Find a repair/recovery specialist you can trust
3. Have a data disaster plan
4. Run regular data recovery drills
This last step is the one that is most often overlooked or not even considered. Many decision makers simply believe that if they have it, it will work. This sounds like the voice in the classic movie “Field of Dreams”, doesn’t it? Many make the mistake of expecting some similar mystical overseer to make sure everything works. As I mentioned before, seven out of ten attempts to restore from the most widely used tape backup solution fail. There is an old proverb that simply says, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” In trying to find the unknown author of this lore, I came across another that seems to fit. “A little bit of risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.” So get excited about your data, do what you have to do to protect it at all costs from all threats, seen and unseen. Your future may depend on it, in more ways than one.