Backup and recovery are different jobs
Backup is copying the data. Recovery is getting the business running again, which also needs the operating system, the applications, the settings and somebody who knows the order to bring things up in. Being able to retrieve a spreadsheet is not the same as being able to open on Monday.
We set up both, and we test the second one. A restore test is the only evidence that any of it works.
How it is put together
- A local copy for speed, so a deleted file comes back in minutes
- An offsite copy, because a fire or a theft takes the local one with it
- Versions going back far enough to predate a problem you have not noticed yet
- Scheduled restore tests, with the result written down
- Monitoring, so a backup that silently stopped three weeks ago is noticed at the time
The two questions worth answering first
How much data can you afford to lose, and how long can you afford to be down? An hour and a day are very different answers from a week and a month, and they change what gets built. Most businesses have never been asked, and the answer usually surprises the owner.
Questions we get asked
- We back up to the cloud already. Is that enough?
- It might be. The questions are whether it covers everything you would need to rebuild, whether anyone has restored from it, and how long a full restore would take. If nobody knows, it is untested rather than working.
- Do you sell your own data centre?
- No. We do not offer private or hosted data centres. We work with established backup platforms rather than running our own.
- How often should restores be tested?
- It depends on how much changes and how much is riding on it. What matters is that it happens on a schedule rather than never.