Backing up data should be standard operating procedure for everyone by now. It’s not worth the risk of losing important documents, photos and videos, especially now that there are so many options for stashing these assets in redundant cloud storage services or on an external hard drive.
But while consumers may have only a few gigabytes of data to back up, organizations have a much more extensive undertaking when it comes to ensuring the safety of mission-critical information. With the ongoing shift to data centers, colocation and cloud computing, companies have to be conscious of how and where their massive data stores are kept.
Back up data center assets to guard against loss
Data center backup plans are increasingly important hedges against disaster. A Unisonius Consulting study of Turkish data centers noted that many sites are still vulnerable to threats such as:
- Flooding: Some data centers are located in low-elevation locales or in cellars.
- Power outage: Having only a single electricity supplier means that a facility cannot easily accommodate redundancy.
- Earthquakes: Depending on their locations, data centers may be subject to seismic activity.
While the report examined data centers in Turkey, similar conditions exist around the world, endangering data that is properly housed or protected by backup. Frequent outages underscore what could happen to data and business continuity in a worst-case scenario.
“There is always a data center outage in the U.S. It’s whether you have invested in backup services or not that will determine whether your services are affected,” Jordan Lowe, CEO at ServerCentral told DatacenterDynamics. “As a business you make an active decision whether to invest into backup sites. It is a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money but, if you don’t want a service affected that’s a bullet you have to bite.”
Features to look for in data center backup
For organizations in sectors such as finance, it is worth having peace of mind when it comes to data backup and restoration. Here are some specific features that make for a good backup solution:
- Secure, automatic multi-site backup: Having just one backup isn’t enough. It is better to use a service that automatically and securely (using encryption) relays backup data from one site to another.
- Disaster recovery: It may be beneficial to migrate assets to a secure off-site location to mitigate risk from flooding, hurricanes and fires.
- Easy administration: A Web-based, graphical interface protected by a virtual private network is valuable for managing backup policies and workflows from anywhere.
These capabilities contribute to the ongoing safety and integrity of data. Even in the event of a natural disaster or outage, key assets are preserved and business continuity is sustained.