Reading a press release this morning regarding a companies "net" version application, the highlight of their release was "Data backed-up daily." Which quite frankly concerned me. When working with any software application most users are accustomed to an auto save feature which in essence is just like a back-up for an unsaved document. If I am working on a document and something happens like a power failure I usually get a recovered document, which picked up everything from the last auto save. Data servers can be configured similarly providing a back up to the last auto save. For instance, our data servers are configured to auto save to the last 9 minutes 59 seconds which means any data published 10 minutes ago will be backed-up. Now some would argue that even a ten minute back-up is too long so you have to consider what is best for your data. When making that consideration while all of us think that our data is extremely vital you need to consider what would happen to your business if you lost the last ten minutes worth of data or the last days worth of data. Data recovery is huge as well so off site storage is always a factor to consider...after the data is backed up where are the back-ups being stored? Believe me this as well can be an entire volume of questions and processes to consider as well however, a good rule of thumb, (I believe) is to make sure the data is being stored off site in a secure environment. Usually a specialized data vault of some sort built in a hardened environment to withstand severe weather is adequate. The biggest consideration should be; off-site, secured, hardened, and proper storage conditions. Any reputable hosting facility should have these kinds of storage available and be sure to ask.
Data recovery is also an issue so be sure to ask how long after a catastrophe will the application and the data be back in operation?
In my humble opinion, a daily back-up in today's environment is frankly not a strong selling point to me. I think most company's are looking for their data to be backed up more regularly than daily and they are looking for quick recovery times.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Daily Data Back-ups?
Posted by John Ganger at 9:09 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment