7 Essential Backup Strategy Best Practices

Nov 6, 2023

Although production storage is becoming more dependable and durable, it is more vital than ever to create and maintain a quality, independent copy of production data regularly. Today’s customers and application owners demand no data loss, even in the case of a system or facility outage, especially with cloud backup in the mix. They also anticipate recuperation time frames in minutes rather than hours. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on IT and storage managers to develop an adequate backup plan.

What Is Data Backup?

Data backup is a word that is often used in the field of information technology. It entails creating a duplicate of the current data and storing it somewhere else. The fundamental reason for backing up data is to have it available if the original data becomes unavailable, lost, destroyed, damaged, or stolen.

You may keep a duplicate copy of your data in any location for backup reasons. You might save it on an external data storage device. Another feasible alternative is to backup data to a cloud storage platform.

The goal of data backup is not to prevent data loss but to recover the backup copy if it occurs. As a result, it is the most crucial phase in any large-scale modification to a website, computer, or database.

7 Essential Backup Strategy Best Practices

To help, here are seven recommended practices for developing this strategy.

1.    Increase Backup Frequency

Ransomware has raised the need for regular data center backups. Intelligent backups are advised for fast and regular backups, while the backup appliance and (block level incremental) BLI backups allow for quick and efficient backups of any data collection. In-place recovery, sometimes known as “instant recovery,” stores a virtual machine’s data on secured storage, enabling applications to be restored in minutes.

A higher-performing disk backup storage space is a critical prerequisite for effective in-place recovery technology. An option is streaming recovery, which instantiates the virtual machine’s volume on production storage, prioritizing data access and making backup storage speed less important.

2.    Align Backup Plan with Service-Level Requirements

Data centers are moving away from prioritizing individual applications and toward quick recovery and block level incremental (BLI) backup capabilities. IT can no longer audit these programs and decide backup priorities with over a dozen applications and bigger enterprises with over 50.

Chargeback and showback methods may assist application owners in rethinking recovery times. Rapid recovery and BLI backup capabilities enable IT to prioritize data and apps within a 30-minute to one-hour timeframe, making extensive audits less expensive and more feasible. However, most software programs have limits on the number of BLI backups that may be performed before performance suffers. BLI backups and in-place recovery are affordable to IT departments, and the combination of BLI and quick recovery is less costly than high-availability solutions.

3.    Continue to Adhere to the 3-2-1 Backup Rule

The 3-2-1 backup rule recommends that enterprises keep three full copies of their data, two local copies on various media types, and one off-site copy. Backing up to a local on-premises backup storage system, transferring the data to another backup system, and replicating the data to another location are all part of this process.

Storage snapshots may be counted as one of the three copies in modern data centers, even on the main storage system. Meeting the need for two copies of two different media types is increasingly difficult in today’s data centers. Cloud storage is a second media type if it is immutable and cannot be wiped by a malicious attack.

4.    Use Cloud Backup with Intelligence

IT professionals should exercise caution when transferring data to the cloud, particularly backup data. While cloud backup has a lower initial cost, the long-term expenditures might be higher than holding 100 TB of storage.

For data transported back to on-premises during recovery, most cloud providers charge an egress cost. Smaller businesses may find on-premises storage less expensive, but they should also utilize the cloud for disaster recovery, reporting, and testing. Because not all backup suppliers support the cloud equally, IT planners should inquire about the time it takes from disaster declaration to application use.

5.    Automate Disaster Recovery Procedures

Organizations must prepare for several sorts of recoveries, such as single file or application recoveries and catastrophe recoveries requiring the loss of an entire data center. Because hundreds of apps rely on other processes operating on different servers, timing is critical for success. Due to the rarity of calamities and the reliance on server start-ups, disaster recovery techniques are critical. Some backup solutions provide runbook automation, enabling businesses to save recovery orders and execute them with a single click.

6.    Don’t Rely on Backup to Keep Your Data Safe

Most businesses keep data in backups for too long, making management complex and costly. Backup solutions save protected data in proprietary forms, making individual file deletion impossible. GDPR and “right to be forgotten” laws mandate enterprises to keep and separate particular data categories while deleting just specific components of consumer data on demand. To comply with these laws, enterprises should only keep backup data temporarily.

Organizations may satisfy data protection laws and simplify their backup architecture by using an archive solution for data retention. Although archive systems are sometimes promoted to decrease the cost of main storage, their greatest benefit is assisting enterprises in meeting retention obligations. Organizations may achieve file-by-file granularity and lower the cost of main storage by recovering from backup operations to the archive. This off-production method gives file-by-file granularity, making data management and recovery simpler for enterprises.

7.    Protect Endpoints and SaaS Applications

Endpoints, such as laptops, desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones, hold significant data that may be lost if they fail, are stolen, or are lost. Cloud-based endpoint security technologies aid in the backup of these devices to a centrally controlled cloud repository. However, enterprises often need to pay more attention to SaaS apps that are not automatically secured, such as Office 365, Google G-Suite, and Salesforce.com. Data security programs that can safeguard these platforms should be considered by IT planners, either integrated into their current systems or as SaaS-specific systems. Backup software can do BLI backups, in-place recovery, cloud tiering, DRaaS, and disaster recovery automation.

Conclusion

Hackers are evolving new methods to get access to your data. For these reasons, businesses must implement data backup best practices to mitigate data loss dangers and improve data recovery possibilities.

Now that you understand the importance of backing up your data and the many data backup solutions available, you can choose the one that best suits your company’s needs.

See:  67% of top 1000 US Websites Violate EU’s General Data Protection Law (GDPR)

If your firm is on a medium or large level, you may check into the finest data backup solution for your needs.

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