Among the many services your provider of IT services in Irvine can offer are those of Backup and Backup and Disaster Recovery. But is there a difference between these two things?
In short, yes. Every business should backup its data. Backup and disaster recovery is a different entity from simple backup. Backup and backup disaster recovery work together to support the continuity and security of your business, and understanding the differences between the two is crucial to building and executing a business strategy that is secure and resilient.
Backup refers to backing up your business’s data. A backup is a copy of essential files. It involves copying your data into a secondary form in an archive file, and this can be used later to restore the original file in the event of a disaster. Backup may take many forms, including physical software, backup storage, and backup within the Cloud. A large percentage of businesses use multiple different solutions for backup concurrently for maximum protection.
Different types of backup solutions include:
- Full backup
- Local backup
- Offsite backup
- Remote backup
- Online backup
- Cloud backup
- Incremental backup
- Differential backup
- Mirror backup
Backups can be created via an array of means, including but not limited to replication, live migration, and traditional tape backup.
Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) is that wider process which protects your data and provides procedures followed to restore your data should the unthinkable happen to your business. A response to a disaster, it is a strategic plan implemented with the aim of mitigating the risks to a business from threats related to natural disaster or human-induced disaster – for example, fire, tornado, flood, or cyber-attack.
A backup recovery plan incorporates testing and maintaining the legitimacy of backup processes. BDR plans seek to maintain critical operations in the event of a disaster event, keeping your business running before, during, and after so that you experience minimal disruption to your normal operations.
BDR includes consideration of:
- What are you backing up?
- What happens with your backups?
- Where are your backups being stored?
- What offsite backup procedures do you have?
- How do you archive backups?
- How long do you keep archived data?
- How easily is archived data retrieved?
- How easy is it to restore your system?
Creation of a BDR plan requires determination of your application priorities, alignment of your backup policies with your strategy for disaster recovery, and creating and testing protocols prior to their implementation.
CloudStep is an Irvine IT services provider and we are expert in backup and backup and disaster recovery. Contact us today to learn more and understand how we can help your business succeed in terms of managed IT solutions.