Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Beware Unreliable and Inefficient Data Security Solutions
Thursday, May 21, 2009 by Michael Holley
Most of us are aware of the importance of protecting critical
business data with some form of backup system. Just as important,
however, is choosing a reliable and efficient backup solution that
is robust, secure, and can restore your data quickly and completely
should a crisis occur.
We run into too many companies who are still using outdated
tape-based backups. Tapes are unreliable for a number of
reasons:
- Tapes are physically delicate and prone to damage by common
environmental conditions such as excessive heat, humidity, or
magnetic interference.
- Tapes are subject to loss or theft.
- Tapes have a limited life and need to be replace every 6 to 12
months
- If a tape has been damaged or a backup didn't complete
properly, you won't know until you try to restore your data to no
avail.
In addition to a providing a quicker restoration, hard
drive-based backups to NAS devices or onsite servers possess none
of the problems listed above. However, as clearly illustrated by
the recent Avsim disaster, a solution that exists
solely onsite presents its own risks.
The best total solution is a hard drive-based backup that
includes an onsite and offsite component. While the onsite
component exists for speed of recovery to reduce downtime in the
event of hardware failure, the offsite component backs your data up
to a remote data center, where it can be recovered in the event of
a local disaster such as an attack from a hacker or an office flood
or fire.
Let us know if you have any questions about any of this or would
like us to evaluate your current backup system. You can always
shoot us an email at TheFutureOfIT@switchfast.com.
Best,
Michael Holley
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support
& Consulting
Rochester
IT Support & Consulting
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