News: Consulting for Small Business

Small Business Data Backup Choices

Hard drive, tape, USB drive, offsite, optical, paper, ...

by Keith R. Wheeler

7/14/2006

Small business has made some tremendous strides in implementing technology solutions over the last several years. The benefits are being realized as the dependency on these systems continues to grow. Growth can be found in another aspect of the small business computer system: the volume of irreplaceable data stored in these systems. The consultants at Responsive Network Services LLC believe that this is the most undervalued asset a small business owns. Even though computer systems don’t appear to use moving parts in their daily operation, the typical hard drive inside of a user’s computer or server is spinning at a high rate of speed with a set of mechanical arms reaching all over the inside of this case of spinning platters. At some point, mechanical failure is virtually assured. That’s the reason a fully understandable and regularly executed backup system is mandatory for every small business using a computer system. Every small business is different and each small business has its own amount of critical data requiring reliable backups. Therefore, there is no one silver bullet method of backup which is perfect for ALL small business entities. For instance, a single computer system in use at one-office mechanic’s shop storing a couple of hundred spreadsheets and an ever-growing QuickBooks file might be able to get away with using a rotation of USB thumb drives as an adequate form of backup. However, a law firm with forty-five users spread across three different locations using multiple servers and a Microsoft Exchange email and calendar system, needs a more sophisticated, pervasive backup system. In this case, a tape-based system coupled with a high-end backup software component could be a practical primary backup system. In addition, a secondary backup using external hard drives would be a very workable complement to the tape system in order to provide a higher level of data protection. A more recent development in backup concepts includes drive imaging software with differential updates throughout the work day. Some of the top-tier backup software vendors are offering continuous backup around the clock with backup intervals as low as six minutes. A further backup consideration is internet-based offsite backup systems which allow the system to automatically use the internet to make a copy of the data on a server in a, hopefully, different geographic location. In the event of a regional disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, offsite backup provides a clear and relatively inexpensive way to recover your data even when the original computer system and all local copies of the data are no longer available. When considering the implementation of a comprehensive computer backup system, it is important to be aware of financial considerations. Some backup systems are overkill for different ranges of data volume. However, the opposite is certainly true. An underperforming backup system can be detrimental to the health of your small business. Taking a shortcut to save a few dollars on the backup system can cost dearly in the event of a system catastrophe. The average small business spends tens of thousands of dollars, or more, creating the data needing protection. It may cost a more than a thousand dollars for the appropriate backup system. It will be money well spent. Recovery is another subject needing attention when choosing a backup system. For smaller entities, recover might be accomplished in a matter of minutes. On the other hand, larger systems may require several hours to reinstate the system and data to a usable state. The backup “window” needs to be acknowledged in order for the system to be fully available to users during their designated work hours. In order to create the optimum backup system for your small business, contact a Responsive consultant to discuss all of the critical aspects of your data storage and recovery. Our firm has worked with small businesses ranging in size from 1 to 65 users.