The
importance of backing up your company’s server
Information
is undeniably imperative to every company or business and these days most
company information is stored electronically. In order to safeguard against
potential data loss from a natural disaster, theft and hardware failure,
company information must be backed up.
Thus
in order to protect your business’s information from potential loss, a disaster
recovery plan should be developed and one past of this plan should be server
backups.
Advantages of using
external server back up
When
you are using a server to hold company information and run websites, email and
databases, backing up that server is an essential and also simply task which
should be carried out regularly.
The
most effective type of server backup is offsite server backup. This is where
you employ an external company to run a backup of your server and house that
information on one of their servers. This way if a disaster strikes your
building and your server is rendered useless, you can retrieve the latest
version of your information from the external company and be up and running
within a few hours.
There are mainly three types of
backup.
·
Full backup - This backs ups the
entire contents of the server including the systemstate
data.
·
Incremental backup - This backs up files and folders that have
been modified or created since the full backup.
·
Differential backup - This backs up files and folders that have
been created and changed after a previous full or incremental backup.
Important factors
to consider while looking for a server back up service
When
seeking an appropriate server backup plan, there are some factors that one needs
to consider in order to get the best possible service. These include:
·
Ensure that the backup plan you are considering
will work effectively with your organisation’s
servers and data. i.e. is it compatible with the
server’s operating system etc.
·
Does the plan enable you to take backups of
selected information or will you have to take back ups of all the information which
is stored on the server?
·
Does the backup plan allow all backups to
be taken automatically or do you have to conduct them manually?
·
Does it allow to backup folders that are
currently open or databases that may be in use at that time?
·
Lastly, what type of protection do they put
in place? Do they encrypt data to ensure it can’t be hacked?
