Backup & Disaster Recovery (BCDR)
The Importance of a Solid Business Continuity Strategy
As an IT service provider, we understand how detrimental data loss and downtime can be for businesses. When critical systems and data are unavailable, it brings operations to a grinding halt, resulting in lost revenue, decreased productivity, and damaged reputation. This is why having a robust business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy in place is crucial.
We’ve outlined some best practices businesses should implement as part of their BCDR planning:
Perform Regular Backups
Backing up data should be an automated, recurring task rather than a manual one. Set up automated daily incremental backups combined with weekly full backups of all critical data and systems. Store backup copies both onsite and offsite to account for physical damage to facilities.
Choose the Right BCDR Tools
Invest in reliable, enterprise-grade BCDR solutions purpose-built for protecting business data and systems. Solutions should have capabilities like data backup and recovery, system failover, replication, and virtualization.
Test and Audit Recovery Plans
Simply having a BCDR strategy on paper is useless unless tested. Regularly perform simulated disasters and test restores of backup data to ensure your plans actually work. Conduct audits to ensure backups are capturing all required data and systems.
Prioritize Vital Systems and Data
Identify business-critical applications, databases, and infrastructure. Resource limitations often mean you can’t back up everything equally. Prioritize protection based on potential business impact.
Maintain Offsite Backup Storage
Keep some backup copies in a secure, offsite location to protect from site failures. Popular options include cloud storage, offsite tape rotation, and alternate data centers.
Validate Backup Integrity
Backup solutions should validate recovery ability and backup integrity through features like backup testing, anomaly detection, and error reporting. Verify backups are capturing point-in-time application data.
Review BCDR Plans Periodically
Revisit BCDR strategies periodically to account for new servers, virtual machines, databases, and logical infrastructure. A plan that isn’t updated becomes obsolete.
Practice Real-World Scenarios
Simply backing up data isn’t enough – practice restoring it. Perform test restores for server failures, database corruptions, cyber-attacks, and other scenarios to confirm recovery readiness.