Importance of Backup and Disaster Recovery

Importance of Backup and Disaster Recovery

-        Harsh Khandve

Introduction

It's no secret that data is a necessary component of our day-to-day lives, both personally and professionally. But many of us are still waking up to how easily and quickly a disruptive event can make it disappear. Data is stored in various ways, and there are just as many ways, if not more, it can be lost. Losing some photos from your vacation might be annoying, but it pales in comparison to losing critical customer information due to data failure.

Backup and recovery solutions not only provide peace of mind but also help protect your bottom line. Your company could end up losing a significant amount of money from just a few minutes of downtime.

For example, it's estimated that for every hour of downtime a Fortune 1000 enterprise experiences, the organization loses an average of $500,000 to $1,000,000. On top of that, there are also costs associated with damage to the company’s reputation and loss of customer confidence.

It's common for businesses to underestimate how vulnerable their data is to potential disasters both artificial and natural. Hardware failures, user errors, ransomware attacks, and other unfortunate events can all result in essential data being deleted or corrupted.

In this article, we’ll explore what data backup and recovery is, how it works, and what you should look out for when searching for a modern backup and recovery solution for your business.

What is Backup and Recovery?

Backup is the process of creating a copy of data to protect against accidental or malicious deletion, corruption, hardware failure, ransomware attacks, and other types of data loss. Data backups can be created locally, offsite, or both. An offsite data backup is a key part of any business continuity/disaster recovery plan.

Restore is the process of retrieving data from a backup. This might mean copying data from backup media to an existing device or to a new device. It also could mean copying data from the cloud to a local device, or from one cloud to another. Recovery refers to the process of restoring data and operations (e.g., returning a server to normal working order following hardware failure). Products aimed at rapid recovery of data and operations are typically referred to as business continuity and disaster recovery, or BCDR, solutions.

Restore and recovery times can vary widely depending on the backup format and data recovery methods you choose. Additionally, restore needs also vary (e.g., restoring a single file vs. an entire server). Finally, critical data may live on workstations, local servers, and in the cloud. These are important considerations when selecting a backup and recovery solution.

What are the 3 Types of Backups?

Backups are often bucketed into three categories:

Full backups – Like filling up an extra tire at the service station, think of this process as pumping all of the data stored on a production system into a backup system for safe keeping. Full backups protect every bit of data from a single server, database, virtual machine (VM), or data source connected to the network. These backups can take many hours, even days, depending on the amount of data being saved. The more modern a data management solution is, the fewer full backups it must perform, and when it does, the faster it goes.

Incremental backups – Think of incremental backups as adding just a little more air each time you revisit the station — just in case — so you’re always ready to replace your tire. An incremental backup captures only new data since the last full incremental was performed. However, a full backup is required before a backup solution can perform its first incremental backup. Then it can automatically do them based on the last incremental taken.

Differential backups – Like incremental backups, these add more air but the delta is from the last full backup, not the last incremental. Think of this backup as what’s different from the last time you even filled the tire with air. Again, this can only happen if a full backup has been performed first. Organizations typically establish policies about how much data and when incremental or differential backups should occur.

Why Backup and Recovery is important?

Data powers your organization and your competitive advantage. That’s why backup and recovery is important. With a robust backup and recovery strategy — and technology solution — in place, your organization can:

•     Prevent data loss – The fallout from lost or compromised data ranges from irritating to costly. Businesses can suffer financial penalties as well as loss of customer trust and brand reputation. The main role of backup and recovery is to preserve critical data in case of loss or damage.
•       Sustain operations – In face of disaster — natural or manmade including a ransomware attack — businesses keep functioning.
•        Maintain a good customer experience – Lost customer records create business challenges such as reduced customer satisfaction and revenue as well as non-compliance with regulations. Alternatively, rich always-available customer datasets drive greater customer loyalty and, consequently, higher profits.
•    Keep employees productive – Effective data backup and recovery eliminates wasted time employees must spend rewriting reports, rekeying data, or recalculating spreadsheets when data and files go missing.
•       Retain historical records – Backing up data allows businesses to build corporate archives of their operations, and in some cases is mandated by industry or government regulations.
• ·       Satisfy auditors – Laws differ from one jurisdiction to another, but having important accounting and other financial records backed up, recoverable, and easily accessible for both tax reasons and audits is critical to business operations.
• ·       Achieve peace of mind – Whether a hurricane, cybercrime, or system failure, bad things can happen to even the well-managed companies. Having a robust data backup and recovery strategy, supported by the right technology solution means that your organization can be resilient and weather even the most difficult circumstances.

Modern, Comprehensive Backup and Recovery versus Traditional Backup and Recovery

Modern, Comprehensive Backup and Recovery	Traditional Backup and Recovery
Low (or no) capital costs. Modern backup solutions are typically a single platform with low or no on-prem infrastructure footprint, keeping backup and recovery costs low.	High capital costs. Often IT must cobble together multiple, costly infrastructure point products for data backup which raises costs.
Fast, accurate backups. Modern backup eliminates data silos and automates operations for faster, more accurate backups than traditional approaches.	Slow, error-prone backups. Traditional backup contributes to mass data fragmentation — having siloed data that requires manual operations and leads to greater backup errors than modern approaches.
Set and forget policies. Once IT staff creates and approves policies, they are easily and automatically added to data sources as servers join the network.	Tedious policy setting. IT staff must create and manage a unique policy for each data source as it is added to the network. And if a server is added without IT being notified, the business risks data not being backed up.
Instant and predictable recovery. Modern backup minimizes data loss and provides predictable recovery assurance with restores at scale, and to any point in time.	Unpredictable recovery. Traditional backup can be slow and error-prone, often bleeding into production time.
Unlocks business value through complete data visibility. Because there are no longer data silos and all backups are completed on one platform, IT can see and gain insights from all of enterprise data and apps.	No access to business insights because data is dark or hidden. Because backups are completed using many products and data can easily be lost, IT has dark data that makes it impossible to use for business insights.
Ransomware protection. Modern backups feature immutable snapshots and have minimal data center footprints, reducing attack surfaces.	Ransomware protection. Traditional backups do not include immutable snapshots and have large data center footprints, widening attack surfaces.

Conclusion

This article is to let the readers know why exactly backup and recovery is important and how it will save an organizations time as well as money. In this growing and developing world, new technologies and different methods are developed to ensure more safety and less expensive backup and recovery. Therefore, we need to be updated about modern methods and benefits of those methods as compared to traditional backup and recovery. Lastly, to achieve a smooth business continuity you need to ensure backups are done frequently and that an appropriate strategy is in place to restore data as soon as possible.