Corbel: Does your data back-up plan have your back covered?

It’s a busy weekday afternoon, and you go to access your internal database, but the information isn’t there. It’s corrupted. Your customers don’t care, they’re expecting you to deliver by the end of the day. So, what do you do? You’ve got a plan to recover the data you need to get those orders out, right?

Right?

How long could your business last if your IT systems failed? Data gathered by tech research firm Gartner suggests 98% of companies would need to restore their systems within an hour before it had serious impact on their ability to function.

What’s your back-up plan?

March 31^st is World Back-Up Day, which is a great excuse to look at your recovery times capabilities, and ask yourself the big question… could you get back up and running within that key hour if your data got lost, corrupt or inaccessible? And if not, what can you do to improve things?

First things first. What is your current recovery time? If you were looking at an empty folder instead of your internal database, or an error box instead of your stock inventory, how long would it take you to get that priceless data back again?

Could you get it back within that golden hour? Would it take longer? And when did you last back-up those critical systems? Was it today? If not, restoring out of date data could create even more problems for your business.

Can you rely on your back-up, and can you restore it quickly?

Go and test your back-up systems now. It may take a little time, but believe us, it’s a lot less terrifying trying to recover data when you’re only rehearsing. If this is the first time you’ve tested your back-up systems, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Research suggests 34% of companies fail to test their back-ups at all. And of those that do, 77% have found failures. Those aren’t healthy numbers.

Done? How long did that take? Was it less than an hour? And is your back-up data bang up to date?

When did you last assess your back-up systems?

Most businesses have become more and more reliant on IT to improve workflow, data and application access. But our recovery and back-up systems don’t always move with the times. Older forms of data back-up, such as tape or disk recovery systems, which are slow and costly, don’t cut it in the modern workplace. Even modern cloud back-up is slower than you’d need if your IT infrastructure had a wobble right now.

Here’s the bottom line, if your current back-up plan doesn’t pass the one-hour test, you’re leaving your business open to a potentially painful and costly fall if your data becomes corrupted, accidentally deleted or otherwise inaccessible.

Corbel has a swift hybrid solution

Corbel provide a reassuring solution to this issue with a managed recovery service. This involves both physical hardware and cloud back-up. Daily backups are performed on an on-premise recovery  server and replicated  to the cloud with your chosen recovery points  – delivering a hybrid back-up where servers can be recovered within the magic hour either on or off premise.

This hybrid system ensures you can restore your files and folders in a matter of minutes, and your servers within that critical hour. So instead of a mad panic, loss of business, and hold ups to your busy schedule, Corbel make a critical loss of data a small road bump, and not a catastrophe.

Visit www.corbel.co.uk for more info.