Technology Implementations: Backup Solutions and Disaster Recovery
One of the most important aspects of any Information Technology systems infrastructure is your backup strategy. There are many options for backups, each with their own strengths and primary purpose.
Image Based Backups
These type of backups take complete images of entire drive letters, similar to how Ghost has worked for years. With newer Microsoft Server versions (v2003 an later), we now have the ability to take "snapshots" of each drive letter without booting into a separate operating system. We can image all of your data, the operating system, live databases, and all software and settings without any downtime for the server... even open files are backed up with this method. It literally creates an exact image of your server (or workstation) at any point in time. Jackson Technical recommends StorageCraft's ShadowProtect for our image based backups.
Because imaged backups do not require exclusive access to your data, we can backup throughout the day. By backing up every hour, you no longer would lose a full day's work in the case of server failure.
This method is best for complete system failures such as hard drive failures and server malfunctions. We can even take these images and restore them to a completely different server or temporary PC.
Off-site Replication
Offsite data replication allows for your data to be transferred securely over the Internet to a datacenter. By having your data at another physical location, you protect yourself from losing your critical databases, documents, and financial information due to a disaster to your office... from fires, tornadoes, and other acts of nature to man-made problems such as a broken water pipe causing a building flood.
Jackson Technical will work with you to identify your most critical business data and setup custom data replication to our secure Tulsa datacenter facility.
This method of backup is best at storing your critical files in a second location. Due to current Internet bandwidth costs and limitations, complete backups are not typically performed with this backup. We select which files are most important and copy them on a nightly basis.
Tape Backups
Tape backup has been around a long time. Newer technologies and the high cost of tape drive hardware has diminished it's use, but it still has a place. The media is inexpensive, which allows for cost effective daily offsite storage.
This method is also good for permanent archiving. Other backup methods primary intent is for disaster recovery... getting you back to where you were before a server failure or facilities problem. Permanent archiving allows you to create a backup on a periodic (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc) basis which allows you to later review data as it was back in time. Some financial, public and legal industries require historical retention by law.
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First published on 03/08/2002
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Last modified on 03/08/2002
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