Versioning backup for effective business data backup
“An effective backup strategy is one where your backup solution will be able to recover and restore your employee’s work files, quickly and easily, from any kind of loss so that company productivity is not affected.”
Designers at Redvue Systems have identified 5 criteria that are important for an effective backup strategy.
Here are the 5 criteria you should be aware in choosing a backup system and how we have addressed those to help the small businesses.
#1 – Versioning Backup
The main reason to backup employees’ work data is to be able to recover lost files in case of mishaps. Mishaps can lead to data loss, thus productivity loss, and can happen in many forms:
- Ransom-ware / Malware /Virus Attack
- Employee caused deletion or corrupted file
- Loss of Computer
- Hard disk crash
- Vandalism and Natural Disaster
Mishaps can happen to 1 or many work files on a computer. One event can affect multiple computers. If the employees had not saved a copy of their work file somewhere else, the information is likely lost permanently. Even if there is backup, sometimes having just one generation of backup is not good enough. Some forms of loss require you to recover from an earlier generation to get the good file. The latest backup generation may have been corrupted already. In this case, the more versions kept, the better chance you have to recover your employees’ lost work files.
#2 – Intelligent Backup Process
There are many backup methods but many are not sustainable over time due to excessive resource use, long backup time window and requires substantial amount of time to manage the process. If the process backs up entire set of files every time, the process will take a long time and will use up a lot of storage space. Backups should be only done selectively and as needed.
#3 –Frequent Backups
So most IT personnel cut back on the frequency of backups due to the tedious nature of the process, which is opposite to what is good practice for protecting data.
Assume that your employees generate data throughout the day. If you backup once a week, the strategy has a “window of vulnerability” of 5 days. In other words, it is prone to loose up to 5 days worth of work if loss happen in between. If you backup once a day, you have a day’s worth of work that can be lost. But assume you backup once an hour. Then the “window of vulnerability” becomes almost negligible for most small business need.
In general, the more frequently you backup, the better your data is protected.
#4 –Automation
It is simply too much for a human operator to perform the above 3 criteria because of the tedious, repetitive and time consuming nature. The only way to meet all of the required criteria in this very critical process is to fully automate the process.
#5 – Easily recover and restore lost files
Often, employees organize folders and files in a way that it is convenient for them and are familiar to them. There may be files with the same name but in different places, but the employee knows exactly which is which. If the backup system organized the employee’s files differently in the archive then the person cannot easily find the needed file.
SMARTOffice CDP product recognizes the importance of Versioning Backup for effective business data backup so it is purposely designed to deliver you the following features:
- Versioning scheme that is highly efficient; file based backups guarantee you can recover the file you need.
- A highly Intelligent process only backs up changed files. Backup windows are very short, and backups happen in the background. It takes care of the entire company’s computers.
- Efficient storage usage. Even with Intelligent backup process, over time your versions can accumulate. The built-in “De-clutter” function performs version management and cleanup in the background. This product can serve a typical office type of small business for a very long time without adding storage.
- Continuous Protection. Due to our short backup window, we can do frequent backups as needed to assure no gaps exist in your backup.
- Full Automation. Set up once and SMARTOffice CDP takes care of the whole company.
- Removes human error from this tedious but very important chore.
- Easy to recover and restore. We archive each employee’s files in the same folder structure as his computer so it is easy to recognize what is in the archive.
Read about: Why SMARTOffice CDP is the best backup solution for small business.
Below are versions of the file “Importance of Versioning Backup.docx” categorized by data and time, stored inside SMARTOffice CDP archive.
