This is the second installment in the backup series, the first being on the use of tape. We are currently in the best place for backups in the 30 years I’ve been doing IT. Disk-based backups are awesome! The best! If you are not on a disk-based backup system, listen up, because this is where you should be. Disk-based backups (unlike tape) are continuous throughout the day. This means that if you need to restore something created just a few hours ago you can, unlike tape that only backs up the previous days information.

Reliable. Disk-based backups are highly reliable, because the hardware they are running on is some of the most reliable in the industry. Think about it, how many times do you turn on your computer and it doesn’t start. Probably very infrequently, and when it happens there’s a good chance it’s not the hard drive that went bad. Hard disks are fast, so the writing of your data to the backup is quick.

 

Monitoring. You have to ensure your backups are running and the logging and monitoring of disk based systems are second to none. In addition, your computer support company can often monitor these backups for you in real time using their monitoring system, ensuring that when a backup fails, it gets looked at and fixed immediately.

 

Offsite. This is where disk backups get really cool. With today’s large internet connections you can push the data from the local backup to the offsite backup automatically throughout the day. If you were to experience a disaster, all of your data is offsite and current to the time right before the disaster took place. I can’t stress how important this is.

 

Many, many people spend good money on their systems and then shortchange themselves on the backups and it usually comes back to bite them. Talk to your system provider about disk-based backups as soon as you can. Our next article will be on Disaster Recover and continuity of your systems.