Website Designers

 4 steps to a stress free back up

But at many companies, that's simply not the case, says Jonathan Woods, a strategic architect at Logicalis. "Technical failures aren't uncommon, and there are a bunch of other risks to consider: operator error, bandwidth constraints, and damage caused by poor handling of tapes, for example," he says.

Fortunately, he says, there are a number of simple steps, which can make an example disaster recovery plan, that companies can take that should help them mitigate against a back-up disaster:

1. Align your back-up strategy with your wider business recovery strategy

The back-up process can only be successful if it is closely tied to the needs of the individual applications that your organisation uses to carry out its day-to-day business activities, says Woods. "For every application, you need to have a recovery time objective maximum time between an event and the time at which a system must be returned to operation) and a recovery point objective (the maximum acceptable time between the last available back-up and the time a disruption occurs). You also need to know which servers those applications are running on, and where they are physically located," he says.

2. Size your solution carefully

A common mistake is to underestimate the size of the back-up solution you require, says Woods: "Make sure you do the maths properly: have you got enough tape, enough tape drives, enough bandwidth? Is the back-up server capable of handling the number of drives you require? Have you sized for the future, ensuring that the back-up solution will be sufficient in a year or two years' time?" And for applications that demand the highest levels of availability, he adds, back-up may simply not be appropriate - a full replication of operational data to an offsite location may be required instead.

3. Pick your media well

Tape doesn't last forever - it tends to deteriorate over time, expecially when data has been written and overwritten to it numerous times, says Woods. Still, it is cost-effective, reliable and newer tape technologies offer greater capacities than ever before. An alternative to tape, adds Woods, is low-cost Serial ATA disk technology, which performs particularly well for full, sequential backups, but tends to be less suitable for incremental where only data that has changed since the last back-up is captured. "Either way, pay attention to the manufacturer's instructions for use, and ignore the expiry date given for a piece of storage media at your peril," says Woods.