Backup

There are two categories of backup - on-site and off-site. Each has their own benefits. The most important thing to know is - you need both.

Let's be honest. Backups are time consuming, a pain in the neck, and costly. They require managing multiple backups types, methods, synchronization, archiving and hundreds of settings to get a good backup strategy. Copying files to a portable hard drive and taking it home with you is equivalent to putting your life savings under your mattress. Portal hard drives fail all the time.

Over the years we have discovered that there are 3 types of people when it comes to backup.

1. Ostriches. "Don't worry about it." This group thinks it will never happen to them. They have their head in the sand. They may have a tape or disk backup, but they don't regularly check or test it. They don't have anyone monitor their backups and they don't have an off-site strategy.
2. Cheapos. "Backup is too expensive." This group says that backups are just too expensive and they'll do everything shy of doing it right. Backups usually involve some human intervention and traveling in someone's car.
3. Winners. "Let's do it right." This group knows the value of having both local and off-site backups. There is not a Fortune 1000 company that doesn't do it this way.

You cannot afford to rebuild your entire infrastructure when (not if) you experience a catastrophic failure.

Are you prepared if:

• Someone broke into your office and stole everything in your server closet?
• A fire devastated your building?
• An angry employee deleted files from your server without you knowing?
• Someone infected your server(s) with a virus that corrupted all your data?
• A hacker disabled your server(s)?

For most people the answer is usually - no.