Remote backup – what to look for in remote backup services

Choosing a remote backup service is difficult because you only normally put it to the test in a disaster so it has to be 100% reliable. Saving money or using a cheaper service might seem like a good idea in the short term but remote backup services are like insurance and you need to be fully covered in the event of a disaster.

The guide below has some great pointers on what to look for in a remote backup service:

As services become robust enough to support business networks, more businesses are considering online backup for their critical data. Some important factors to consider before making the leap:

Financial liability: Know what’s at stake. Find out what the financial implications are for loss of data if the backup service doesn’t work or if backed-up files become corrupted. The safest bet is to have a backup for your backup, which is more feasible as service prices drop

Service-level agreements: How quickly do different vendors process requests for restoration, and what guarantees are there for response times? Get it in writing.

Availability: Find out how long it takes to restore data if it’s lost and whether there are different levels of availability for different types of data. You’ll want to know exactly how long it will take to get your most critical data back online in the event of a failure.

For more details on remote backup contact us for some free advice.

Another interesting read is this article Is remote backup software right for you?

Backup solutions have long been a bone of contention in the IT world. Everyone knows you need a good, reliable backup, but the age-old question always is this: What’s the best hardware and software to use?

Traditionally, on the hardware side, it’s been tape drives and magnetic tape media. More recently, inexpensive USB hard drives have become more popular. There are several well-established software applications that are fairly reliable, like Symantec BackupExec for Windows or EMC’s Retrospect Backup, but these backup systems, both the hardware and the software, are notoriously unreliable across the board. I have yet to see a tape hardware- and software-based backup system that does not need some near constant baby-sitting and tuning to keep it running well. Even then, the fact you get a successful backup does not necessarily mean you will be able to restore the backed up data. Time and again, I have seen a tape drive fail to read a tape to which it reports a successful backup. I’ve also seen software corrupt backups.

Now I don’t mean to be entirely negative about tape hardware and associated software. I’ve seen it work well over the years, too. My main complaint with these technologies is the amount of manual intervention required to utilize them properly, from tuning the backup jobs to manually rotating and tracking the tapes or hard drives to insure you have access to the backup you need when you need it.

Quite – remote backup is the future.